Molly O'Dell

Picking Up Walnuts
 
 
A copper flare sweeps across
her pale peach cheeks in contrast
to the drab of late afternoon
just after a sprinkle of rain.
 
Walnuts with their black and green
hulls litter the backyard where
my red headed teenage neighbor
hustles to pick up walnuts,
 
for money, of course. I walk
out the back door and enter
her world. Rake in hand, she teases
nuts and rachises from under shrubs,
 
says she can’t stay over an hour—
lots of homework tonight, civics quiz,
plans to run the 5K this weekend,
asks if she should get the ones
 
in my grumpy neighbor’s yard
and says she’s doubly motivated 
to pick up the walnuts. I ask why.
She wants to buy an Apple watch,

technically not a phone, now banned
at school, “so if there’s a shooting
at least I can text I love you before
I’m shot.”
 




Summer Turn
 
 
Jasmine blooms smell wild and sweet. 
Their tangles conceal a long bend 
in the river where it flows through town.
 
Summer rains incite lush foliage, 
the riverbed brims for my languid limbs 
to pull me across in an old black innertube 
 
I patched back in June. Water level’s 
three and a half, no rock-bottom bruises 
this year. Grey heron pays me no mind.
 
Sunlight gleams, grass banks mirror emerald.
Next summer the water could be too low
to laze away the day like Huck Finn and Jim.
 
It’s quiet, tree frogs rest all afternoon. 
At dark they’ll vie in a master croak chorale.