Pecans
In the slant of late afternoon light,
hundreds of pecans stand out tawny against
the mud, fallen leaves, matted grass,
and I can’t stop drifting around the yard
stuffing them in my pockets. This is a gift
November in Mississippi offers after a freeze.
If they release from the husk they will be good,
if they cling they will be rotten or wormy,
and I learn to discern the barely perceptible
difference in weight between plump and desiccate.
Last night’s wind took down some branches.
Maybe someday this old tree will
come down and kill us. We exist by grace
or chance in the free fall of every moment,
but for now, my life is full of sweetness, pecans
like little brains tucked in their bitter shells.
…
Yesterday, in the Batesville Feed and Seed
that advertises We Crack Your Pecans,
the smell of overripe tomatoes, pesticides
and herbicides, corroded bottles of medicine
for hoof rot and mange and lord knows what else,
climbed up my nostrils and wouldn’t let go.
A couple of old guys lounged on wooden chairs.
Customers came and went, asking about
pumpkins (none) and pecans (sold out).
Decades of dust webbed the farm tools,
furred the boxes of Miracle Gro and snail bait,
spidered above the rusty stand of seed packets—
spinach, collard greens, dahlias. Nine baby chicks
pecked grain in a warm-lit cage
at the back of the store. We wandered the aisles,
ducking outside from time to time for air,
to the “Garden Center” with its few six-packs
of dead marigolds and salvia. In the adjacent
concrete workspace, the huge pecan-cracker
clackety-clacked and the blower blew the chaff off.
…
Now, back home, we have picked through
28 pounds of pecans, separated stray bits
of shell from the meat, discarded rotten
or shriveled nuts, broken off blackened
corners, carefully nudged the bitter central
membrane from the sweet flesh halves,
and filled gallon bags with the plump fruit
of my November hours and hours wandering
over the yard, my nearsighted gaze
fixed to discern the tawny oblong shells
from among leaves and sticks and grass.
We have gleaned this year’s harvest
from the enormous, gnarly, messy-leafed tree
whose shade in summer stretches far across
the lawn and over the driveway.
Five fat worms curl blind and maggot-like
among the litter at the bottom of the bucket.
High in the branches, a few remaining
husks hang, open, dark, like agitated stars.
Ann Fisher-Wirth’s seventh book of poems is Paradise Is Jagged (forthcoming from Terrapin Books, February 2023). Read more.
An earlier version of "Pecans" was first published in Dispatches from the Poetry Wars: Poetics for the More-than-Human World: An Anthology of Poetry and Commentary, eds. Mary Newell, Bernard Quetchenbach, and Sarah Nolan (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2020).