The Black Walnut Tree

Photo credit David Burn

The Black Walnut Tree

My mother and I debate:

we could sell

the black walnut tree

to the lumberman,

and pay off the mortgage.

Likely some storm anyway

will churn down its dark boughs,

smashing the house. We Talk

slowly, two women trying

in a difficult time to be wise.

Roots in the cellar drains,

I say, and she replies

that the leaves are getting heavier

every year, and the fruit

harder to gather away.

But something brighter than money

moves in our blood-an edge

sharp and quick as a trowel

that wants us to dig and sow.

So we talk, but we don’t do

anything. That night I dream

of my fathers out of Bohemia

filling the blue fields

of fresh and generous Ohio

with leaves and vines and orchards.

What my mother and I both know

is that we’d crawl with shame

in the emptiness we’d made

in our own and our father’s backyard.

So the black walnut tree

swings through another year

of sun and leaping winds,

of leaves and bounding fruit,

and, month after month, the whip-crack of the mortgage.

- 1992 Mary Oliver