Audio recording of Buckeye Read by the Author
It didn’t make sense to invest so much
in a pocketed nut. But for ten sure springs,
my grandmother withdrew a buckeye
from her purse and placed it in my palm.
I was a mother three times over,
my grandmother long buried, before I missed
them. This morning, passing her home, I saw
a bright fruit hanging, strange as Fatima’s Eye
and trespassed beyond the present
resident’s curb to glimpse close what I knew
I’d never seen. Who’d have bet by dinner
I’d tell my children how gamblers hollow
and fill them with mercury? Or that I’d
finally grasp the weight of her bargain,
grace that can’t be banked, or left in a will,
an annual transaction turned to spare me
bad marriages, collisions, infants sick
and dead. Lush as plums in split suede shells,
her buckeyes still fall where she caught them
dark in the cup of her own luckless palm.