the pictures i recently posted of my mother's house made me remember this poem of mine:




Buckeyes


our yard had two buckeye trees
catty corner they mirrored each the other
branch and trunk.


I grew up in their overlapping shadows
playing halfway between the two

cracking the spikey green balls
with my sneakered feet
prying loose the shining buckeyes with
grubby hands to feel the smooth oiled seed.


Years have passed
disease took one, lightning the other.


it came to me as I stood
in a yard with no more shadows
that the rich browns of the opened buckeyes
looked very much like the wood of a coffin.