I’m looking at a walnut when it lets go and thuds to the ground—the branch rocks like a diving board. A vireo calls softly from the woods.
black walnut
September 21, 2012
The walnut tree behind the house keeps knocking on my bedroom roof with its fat green fists. I start thinking fondly of the chainsaw.
September 3, 2012
A squirrel leaping between treetops miscalculates and falls 40 feet to the ground. It lies stunned for a minute, walnut still in its teeth.
August 31, 2012
Blue jays yelling in the treetops. Wind speed is less than three knots, but still there’s a steady shower of yellow walnut leaves.
August 26, 2012
A squirrel hangs by its hind feet to pick a pair of walnuts, drops one, climbs off with the other in its teeth. The day darkens into rain.
August 25, 2012
A small brown butterfly flutters low over the porch floor, checking out the three brown walnut leaflets, one of which trembles in its wake.
July 1, 2012
A thin bead curtain hangs from the walnut tree: tiny tussock moth caterpillars, curled tight as question marks, rappelling down to the road.
May 26, 2012
A slight breeze brings a shower of petals from the tulip tree, while a squirrel at the top of the black walnut makes it rain catkins.
May 17, 2012
Sun in the treetops. A squirrel hangs head-down from a walnut branch to eat the flowers. My lover combs the tangles from her long hair.
February 22, 2012
Dawn. Three deer become two, become three again. The sound of squirrel teeth on black walnut shell—that harsh madman’s whisper.
January 31, 2012
Walnut tree branches behind the house rock by turns, as if from the passage of some large animal, but it’s only this warm-blooded wind.
September 28, 2011
The lowering sky lightens a little when the rain finally starts. Yellow leaves flutter down from the walnut tree like exhausted moths.
September 20, 2011
The walnut trees are already losing their leaves, turning into grotesquely well-hung skeletons a-tremble with squirrels.
August 26, 2011
A violently shaking black walnut branch passes its affliction to an adjacent locust: gray squirrel with an unripe walnut between its teeth.