152 - The Quarry

The Quarry
By Anne Babson Carter

God sleeps in the stone,
dreams in flower, and wakes
in the man.     Goethe

"I've learned," you said,
"what happens rests in a man's eyes."
We were walking in silence
above the quarries,
single file as we always have,
when you began to talk about courage
 (I call it that),
to decide: whether a man suffers,

matters. Coarse bracken and sweet fern,
unchanged since childhood,
curled at our feet
as we moved towards summer's end,
and you told me about a patient
in whom you found no hope—
until his eyes,
following your hands, understood,

and reached for those plains where angels must live.
"Morphine is quick," you said,
and your voice, drifting over my head,
carried notes I'd heard before:
clear about purpose; as though in mercy

Anne Babson Carter is a free-lance poet living in New York City.

153 - The Quarry

there is a purity
that exceeds pride, certainly regret.

Before us lay the quarries.
They were finished and filled with water.
In August's flinty light
I thought,
what do sick people see
behind those masks a doctor wears?
Is compassion visible under glove-like skin,
a green gauze gown? For a time,

on that open ground above Annisquam's coast,
a quiet, ancient as siblings
stretched between us
and I thought,
in that other world where everyone is afraid,
where chairs are metal
and hard truths wait down long corridors—
where most flowers aren't brought
from gardens—would I know you?
There, where to think
about the outside or to own anything;
to be soft or kiss
or let tears lift a man's body—
how easily it lifts
when it weighs the stones
of ten stones—is not allowed,

would I know the hands and eyes
I follow now,
as we walk high—high up here,
closer to clouds, it seems,
than the abandoned pits below?

Where does courage come from,
I thought?
Is it given out when least expected
to be received unknowingly?

The seasons were parting.
Immoveable stones led us on.
"Yes," you said, "it is awful the distance
some must travel to die,
because we revere law
more than pain.
I think pain weighs more." Up ahead,
our car waited beside an old road

154 - The Quarry

once cut decisively for draft horses.
Now they, too, were lost
to the sweet fern air,
and I thought,
had that day been a day like today—
with seas high and the grasses dry
before noon? Did the world throb with insects,
and the still, indiscernible water

have no bottom? "What happens rests
in a man's eyes," and your own,
as you spoke,
were the colors of a sun-lasered sea.
"A doctor has only wisdom,
he isn't taught miracles,"

and then I knew: what else is courage
if not trust
where human needs lie deepest.
Our way among steps
carved a century ago
had been retraced. Soon autumn rains
would begin cooling this place
of waist-high weeds.