Chestnuts

Chestnuts

This autumn morning
there is a warm gray light
at the horizon below the towering chestnut
that guards the row houses on Franklin Street.

I am reminded of the year
my life was interrupted by first grade,
the year my Uncle Ernest died.
Melancholy becomes resignation
like the hollow left
when the hummingbirds have flown.

Fallen leaves on the black pavement,
the smell of latent rain,
my pocket full of chestnuts
I arrange on the tin cover
of the iron radiator
that ticks in the night.