Buckeye
In the woods below the road,
I liked to sit on the end
of the branch of the buckeye tree,
scratchy, hard to get to,
full of knots & twigs & burls.
I smelled the soft moss,
watched the bubbling creek
& heard the shouts of the boys
riding their bikes,
a rabbit rustling in the ferns.
I was happy to be alone,
to hold the spiky chestnut grenade
polished as a mahogany piano,
clean and smooth with no cracks,
to be away from the scolds of adults,
howls of playmates, pleased
to live in the silence of leaves,
the solemn eye of the fruit,
peeling its skin back to a white core of heart
above a jungle of weeds beneath
a low branch, far from drunken Hans
& egg gathering & Sunday prayers.
Even now I can smell grass
growing and leaves turning rusty
& know I can summon a train whistle’s
lonely shriek or the tap
of a woodpecker’s beak against bark.
Geraldine Connolly is a native of western Pennsylvania and the author of four full-length collections, mostly recently, Aileron (Terrapin Books, 2018). Read more.
“Buckeye” was first published in Geraldine Connolly’s book Aileron (Terrapin Books, 2018).