Geode

I wrote this maybe thirty years ago. It seemed self-evident at the time, but, as it’s about the memory of an old quarry, some additional wrinkles might add to the reflections.

My uncle, John Kinkel, discovered quartz, maybe in the 1930s, on his farm near the center of Bedford Village in Northern Westchester County, now two hours’ drive north of New York City. He gave up farming and managed instead the quartz lode. This enterprise supplied the American Quartz Company, which, as far as I know, closed after the lode was exhausted. It was next door to the O’Brien farm. John married Katherine O’Brien and became my Uncle John, who sat in his green fuzzy chair all day. He never moved, and never spoke. He was healthy until the day he died at 93. He only died because the doctor stopped feeding him. He wanted to die.

I used to cross the fields behind the O’Brien farm on the village green, past the willows, the ponds, the marsh, climb the hill, and then lower myself down into the Kinkel quarry, which had extraordinary quartz and mica geodes the size of grapefruits. I brought Cathy there around 1978, and wrote this poem for her, although she was never given to jewels.

A geode is a rock which, when split, reveals an interior of crystals. The molten center of the earth supports the magnetic system which controls gravity, which keeps us from flying off our spinning globe. So the center of the earth is a form of molecular magic, even if it isn’t jeweled. Our galaxy is anchored around an immense black hole, in which all matter is crushed to nothingness. This is a more terrifying form of geode, whose center, rather than being dazzling, is life-ending.

Today there is a subdivision at the base of the Kinkel quarry, which is, however, still surrounded by Emersonian woods. In the old days they seemed to have no end. Today you can Google where they end.

I didn’t put the poem on a computer until January 18th, 1993.

I realized it was a love poem, whose language was very conflicted. In 2022 I resolved those conflicts.

I met a guru in London many years ago who told me my favorite color, my childhood phone number, the number I was thinking of: things that couldn’t be known. He also told me that my soul was in good shape, although there were a few problems left. He could see into me.

When a poem resolves, it isn’t because you get the language right. It’s because you cure your spirit, which then directs the language effortlessly. I’m lucky I’ve lived long enough to have that happen now and then.