The Quarry

The mystical magical quarry that I probably only visited a handful of times.  I'm not sure there was even a reason to visit it .  Yet we did.  I don't remember walking to it.  It was always a ride in the pickup.

At first glance it just looked just  like a prairie pasture.  The more I would look at it thought I would start to see the jumble of rocks, carelessly strewn about in piles.  The rejects?  It was not a natural looking pile of stones. I could see   half formed rectangular prisms.  Fence posts incomplete and discarded?  In other places there would be slabs of rock slung against earthy walls.  The earthy walls would reveal a strata of rock, creamy buff with dark streaks.  The layers of the ocean revealed.  The rock was never naturally on top of the earth.  It was always buried in the prairie loam.

The quarry dipped down to form a small valley or a large ditch.  I don't think anyone would have recognized it as a quarry even.  I knew because that was what we called it.  There wasn't just rock revealed in the grass though, there was also rusty tin cans, bottles of blue, green, and clear glass.  I remember something a baby blue that might have been a baby carriage.  The quarry was repurposed as a "dump" after all rock excavation had ceased.

When I tired of looking for my dinosaur bones I would start to look through the trash to see  what treasures I could find.  Never anything to take home.  The rocks were more of a treasure than trash.

Now I think what treasures or artifact could be found in that midden?  The quarry was started by my great grandfather Henry Bentrup Sr, and he mined it to build the farm house, barn, and fence posts.  My mom says we did not dump our trash in that spot so it must have come from my great grandfather's era.

The last time I visited the quarry was with my husband before we married.  He found a bigger dinosaur bone than I ever found.  It was a slab of rock with a fish diving through it.  My mom brought it out to Oregon for us.  It sat by our pond on Sterling Creek for 30 years.  I did not take it because it was Pat's treasure not mine.  I don't know if he took it or not.  I know he discarded everything else I gave him.  

The only treasure I have from the quarry is a limestone trough my great-grandfather hollowed out to pour milk in for the barn cats.  My dad did the same thing after milking the cows.  It sits on my patio by my apartment, in the city in Oregon.  I have it filled with my treasures for the shores of the Pacific ocean.  From one ocean to another I have my treasures.

The Limestone Quarry

Farther up the road , at the top of the 2nd or third hill was a cut off track that led to the pond and the limestone quarry.  I don't remember exactly how to get there because we never walked that far.  It was always a trip in Daddy's dusty blue ford pickup.

The cut off track was really nothing more than a heavily traveled cow trail that ran along the barb wire fence.  The other side of the trail was a slight imprint in the prairie grass.  The gate was barb wire attached to an old tree branch which hooked to the fence.  Often times it was our job to get out and open the gate and then to stand watch so the cows did not get out.
To this day I'm not sure if it was really a job for us or a way to keep us out of trouble.  All I know was we were left all alone with the gate open to make sure the cows did not get out till Daddy came back.  We took that job very seriously and did not budge from our guard duty  while Daddy was off checking the cattle or feeding them.

Sometimes we would choose to walk instead of riding 4 abreast with Daddy in the truck.  We would travel the cattle trail.  The dirt would be fine and soft on our bare feet.  Cow hooves had pounded it to a fine powder that would poof up as we trudged up the hill.  It felt fine on  our feet because there was nary a sand burr, a goats head( ie puncture vine or in kid language a sticker!), cockleburs, buffaloburs, devils claw, prickly pear cactus, sharp pebbles, or fire ants to look out for on the path.

We roamed those pastures and fields on barefoot.  We wore thongs if we could find them.  (and yes we called them thongs not flip flops)  The only other shoes we had were our Sunday church shoes. Those shoes only made an appearance on Sundays! We were very aware of every plant, animal, insect, rock that was out to get us on the farm.  The dirt on the trail felt like velvet to our calloused feet.  We only had to watch for the cow pies.  The fecal dropping of Hereford cows could be fresh, soft and gooey, or dry frisbees.

As soon as we ascended the hill, our crooked bangs plastered to our freckled foreheads, we could see the dip between the hills and the pond.  It was an oasis in the Kansas summer heat.  It must have been another spring because I don't remember the pond ever drying up.  It was flanked on one side by a rusty, tattered windmill that fed into a stock tank.  The windmill would creak and groan as the wind would buffeted it first one way than the other.  On the other side was a grove of cottonwood trees. 


to be continued....

Up the Road

The plum bushes were at a dip in the road: a hollow.  Fifty years ago they were the only greenery on the road.  Since then a grove of cottonwood trees has sprung up. It's like they guard "the gate" to the plum bushes.   They dwarf the plum bushes; and if I did not know they were there I would have missed the plums.

After the plums were finished I would hike farther up the road.  The road began a  steady rise in elevation.  Of course, being Kansas, I am not talking about mountains.  The hills rose and rolled from there on.  They appeared as camel humps, a savory green in spring and a dusty gray green in mid summer.  

If this camel were to shake out its hair, out would fall the cactus, devils thorn, wild onions, chokeberries, and dusty tumbleweeds caught on barb wire fences.  The glue would be cow patties in various stages of freshness;  from gooey with the blue-green flies, to dried feather weight saucers.  In the ditches by the road were sunflowers happy as the mid day sun to just be alive. They crowded each other shoulder to shoulder, a choir of joy just begging me to pick.

All this I  could see from the road as I  trudged up the first hill.  I  called it , "the dinosaur hill."  As I ascended, the dirt filled ditches and shoulders began to spot with buff and cream colored spots:  limestone fragments uncovered by  the blade.  I  called it,  "the dinosaur hill" because this is where the treasure hunt began for finding prehistoric fossils embedded in the chunks of limestone buried underneath the prairie loam.

In the stones I could see clam shells and mussel shells.  I always kept my eye open, hoping to find some prehistoric monster sleeping in the stone.  I would pick up rocks to keep, only to discard as I found a new and better one.

At the top of the hill I had a view of the low lying wheat fields. In the other direction the hills, rumpled in grass, flowed like the ancient waves they were made of long ago. Here, I would stop to examine the outcroppings of limestone and catch my breath.  I would load my pockets with the best looking rocks.  I tried to imagine the ancient seas and creatures who lived in the seas.  

Inevitably it would be the low of the cattle and clink-clank of the windmill shifting in a dry wind, that would bring me back to the present and the reality of the chores calling my name.  There were the cows to call home.  With my pockets stuffed I would crawl under the barb wire fence and kris cross cattywampus across the pasture to where the cows huddled by the windmill and stock tank.  I'd call,


"Come Boss.  Come Boss", 

and like the Pied Piper I would lead the cows home to the barn, Daddy, and the milking stool.

That was not the only adventure on that Kansas dirt road.  In my mind the road was always a path to some kind of other world, either in my mind or in reality.  It was just one of many treasured playgrounds on the farm outside of Sylvan Grove, Kansas.

Memories

I've been thinking about memories lately.  I've come to realize that some of my memories are not accurate or even true.  I've taken them out so many times to polish and shine them in the rearview window that they have come to mean something entirely different than what happened, which in itself is not always bad except when I confront them with the reality.  It was an anguishing moment to realize that my memories were really just something I longed for  and created as a backup for bad times.

So I then ask myself does the accuracy of my memories matter in all memories?  I don't think so.  Memories are deadly in an old boyfriend but are memories of happy childhood necessarily bad in their inaccuracy?

Today I had an opportunity to compare and contrast two memories.  It has left me a wee bit sad, achy, and bittersweet, kind of like the bitter after taste of a particularly hoppy beer.  The sip to the front of the mouth quenches and tingles on the tongue.  After swallowing it the hops bite the back of the throat and leave a bitter residue in the mouth.  With each swallow the alcohol kind of numbs the hop taste and gives a kind of a giddy feeling.  

I had one of those dreams last night.  I am always amazed that I can still dream of the first boyfriend for no rhyme or reason I can tell.  It is always a heady rush and I'm usually left with such longing that I am hungover for the day.  These are the memories I question for their accuracy.  These are the memories best left in the trunk and  in the scrapbooks.  I've found I don't trust the memories anymore.

Later while sitting in Starbucks reliving a childhood memory in verse I sent myself back to the time to taste and see the memory.

I could feel the sun and the sweat trickling over sunburn and freckles.  I could see the ribs of rock poking out of the dirt.  I could hear the low of cows, the clang of the windmill blades switching directions.  I could feel the ice flow of well water in the stock tank as I picked through the slimy algae to find the snails inhabiting the rusty sides.  

The wind in the cottonwoods make a certain rustling sounds that seem to be whispery voices.  I smell the grassy fresh manure with the blue bottle flies buzzing.  My feet make tracks in the powdery dust on the cattle trail.  I keep my eyes open  and feet on the path to avoid the field cactus and devil's thorn.  I can taste the dirt on the sweet wild onions from the pasture.  I wade through the dark chocolate mud at the pond's edge and strain my eyes to see the minnows darting and flashing silver in the murk.  

The pond in the pasture rimmed to the south by a grove of cottonwood trees was a magical oasis for me in my childhood.

As I relived that memory I asked myself,

"Do you suppose this memory is as inaccurate as the boyfriend memory?"

"Does it really matter if this one is inaccurate?"

No, I don't think so.

It's more of a conglomeration of memories, pressed, packed down with sediment to form a rock- a diamond or more appropriately a piece of limestone filled with dead sea creatures.  This one I won't pack away in a trunk.  It's seared in my brain like the Kansas sun on a 100 degree day.  It's in every freckle on my body.  

Memories,  a rock in a hard place?  Or a lie told to myself?

Revision 2

A strand of agates,
Pearls in a pile of sand.
An island, desert,
in a sea of softening asphalt.
I run my fingers through
the beaded rock.
It feels like water rushing
through a hand pump.

It belies my preoccupation
Of rock, tree, grass.
A yawp of a crow,
Sooty black against denim blue,
(smokey at the horizon)
startles my pseudo reverie.
The heart dances
outside my chest
I push
it back to beating.

I don’t know this tree.
Its leaf is not familiar.
It bothers me,
I don’t know its name.

The serrated edge
of the leaf,
rough on my fingertips,
strokes my mind.
I deliberately rub
it against my skin,
wondering if the green
of late summer,
rich in vibrant life,
will tattoo my epidermis.
The chloroplasts,
plant blood,
oozes,
sticky in its morphology.

I need to:

Focus,
Grasp.
Hear,
inside your head.
Will the words band,
in a strand
and jewel the tongue?

A kiss of words
pass the lips,
mouth my desires.
Plant morphology:
the nodes of a relationship-
leaf, root, or branch?
The living organism.
I avert my eyes
so I can’t see the answer.

Perhaps this prairie plant,
native grass,
will roil its seeds
and quit the wind.
I crush it between my fingers.
Rubbing scents, releasing
emotions for the future.

A tease of a touch,
A start,
a brake,
a change of attire.
Under your voice hides the wind.
It startles me.
The leaf rips,
"x"ed to mark the spot.


I wished upon a star.
It streaked across your skin
on a Kansas night in summer.
It yielded nothing
but a mummy of a leaf.
Releasing the heart
from the chest,
the rock from the sand,
the seed from the grass.

The west wind drives
us onward,
We yield
to limestone fences,
sunken
and laid upon the beds of grass,
Matted in disuse.

A sculpture of a Zephyred wind,
dedicated to our youth.
In later years
consummated in dreams ,
caught up on our horizons.

Nebraska

2nd draft

The Platte's muddy
ribbon, twists,
braids, plaited
with trees that suck
the life, the water,
from the river.

The Divide (a?)
between the Little Blue
and Republican river-
The Land:
Willa's home.

II
Soybeans, bushy in green,
Corn, majestic tall in a blue bowl sky,
dipping and swaying in a constant prairie wind.
Puddles and pools
where cows come to stand,
circular pivots with dried out corners.
Rolls (rolling) into Kansas.
Prairie carpets:
a land I can shrug on,
implant my feet,
root in blue stem
and buffalo grass.

III
Kansas


If I "can't go home
again"- why
do I feel so alive under endless sky?

Winds whip,
and wrap arms
around my body.
Rhizome. Planted
to keep me still,
a voice that wakes me.

my emotions undulate
like the limestone
(dead creatures of forgotten seas)
struggling
to break through surface grass?
The ocean underneath the waves.

(Once when I was a child
I held a seashell,
found lying in a Kansas cow pasture.
White as cumulus stacked in the east.
I marveled at its placement
without a present sea.)

I fight
to twist, twine myself
in the grassy earth.
If all I am
is formed by 15,
can the mountains
ever take the place of sky?

Will my skin flake off like chips
of limestone
exposed by the cut of the road?
Are the scars of my life imprinted like fossil shells
in scattered debris of rock?
or fence post crooked on the wind?

I can't be the fence.
I can't be the barb sharp.
the electricity
can not flow.
It should roll,
heaving past
fence lines
while the prairie surges,
swells, fecund,
fructiferous.

IV

I am hot wired
to these forsaken farms,
barns silvered gray,
collapsing inward to let the sky
fall in them.

The roads that dwindle to grass,
velutinous over earth.
Dusty toes leave tracks
in the primordial mud,
puddles left from the thunderstorm the night before.
the road of my youth crawled over those familiar hills:
dinosaur hill,
plum valley,
dump hill,
buffalo slough,
snake cellar.

V

There be monsters hidden in those ancient farm implements.
teeth rusting evil in the afternoon sun.
A neck of a monster
that would chase me if I dared to look him in the eye.
(Just as I dreamed of tornadoes with evil personalities chasing me with intent to kill)

Was it a mother's warning
that instilled fear?
or a father's
admonition to stay clear,
that KEPT
me from the mossy steps in dank the earth
a cellar drear, monsters ....

In the distance
the windmill clangs
as it switches gears,
cows bellow at feeding time
(I remember fetching cows!
"Cum Boss. Cum Boss.")

grassy fragrant rich manure dries:
land minds to avoid in pasture fields.
The cotton woods rustle to whisper their secrets
to me on afternoon breeze.
Meadowlarks whistle my name and bobwhites "killdeer".
a hint of water, mixed with ripening plum.
life on a Kansas Prairie.