Tag Archives: Dig

September 6, 2018

The Quarryman

	The Quarryman
721	The quarryman surveys his lot,
	With years of mining done.
	The layers of the earth lay bare,
	Most granite stones expunged.
725	And underneath those mighty rocks
	The secrets of the land
	Revealed themselves to quarryman
	From pebbles and loose sand.
	Throughout the project he had found
730	The types of myst’ries three –
	The first of which were things you hide
	For never to be seen.
	Quite early in the harvest dig,
	He chanced on a sealed box.
735	He fumbled for his heavy spade,
	Then struck the pesky lock.
	Within were letters never sent,
	A love that could have been.
	But some revealed a jealousy
740	Akin to spiteful sin.
	The box was hidden here one day
	To aid someone forget –
	A purposeful concealment of
	A cache of life’s regrets.
745	The second type of thing unearthed
	Were knickknacks that were lost.
	These treasures found beneath the dirt
	Weren’t missed so much as dropped.
	The man collected pennies and
750	He had a stash of beads,
	But as he dug still further down
	He found antiquities.
	An arrowhead of flint revealed
	A tussle long ago –
755	Perhaps a battle ‘tween two tribes,
	Or hunting with a bow.
	And as the quarry rocks were broke
	By years of strain and toil,
	A fossil may appear as proof
760	Of life lost in this soil.
	Now as the project starts to wrap,
	The quarryman looks up.
	He sees the final mystery
	A hundred yards at once.
765	The layers show not something lost,
	Nor hidden for to find,
	But rather something that has grown,
	Developed over time.
	The folds of earth show gradu’l change,
770	The shifting of the plates.
	And rising granite falls submerged,
	A sed’ment cap its fate.
	Some pass their days by searching hard
	For meaning or for loot.
775	They search and seek without relent
	Like hunters in pursuit.
	But quarry shows this laborer
	Things hidden, lost, or grown
	Need not be sought, but can be found
780	By looking ’round alone.