I’ve spent all these years writing
and still haven’t found a good way
to work the word “walnut” into a poem.
Oh, I’ve written poems and had the word in place
but it never makes magic. I still try
but every poem with the word “walnut” in it
feels like the last one I wrote.

When I get on stage, I’m up there
saying “walnut” and it falls out of me
like a Christmas bow on New Year’s Day.
The people in front of me nod sagely
and tell me afterward how much they respect me,
but I still can’t work “walnut” into a poem
that will make me young in their eyes again.

I could say: I walk a walnut mile
every time I step into a poem,
I smell walnut on the butt of the pen,
I see walnut sides on my big guitar,
a walnut tree in the yard beyond my own,
but “walnut” as a conjure word
is beyond me.

Perhaps I should be glad
“walnut” resists my poetry, preferring not to be
a metaphor, preferring to be
a wood, a brain nut, a milk chocolate swirl
bent to an hourglass shape. Perhaps
I was never meant to make “walnut”
a magic word.
But I live in hope that someone’s
going to do it,
and that on that day,
I will die
exalting, a walnut stake
through my heart, my head
on a pillow of nutmeats,
brown leaves for a shroud,
my dry words blowing across the neighbor’s yard.

you never told me
how you met mom, why you married,
why you won’t tell me the date
you were married.

(oh, i think i can guess. but i’ll never
know for sure if you don’t say it.
and i don’t care, by the way. the way i see it
once you’re here, you’re here,

and it doesn’t matter much
what others call you because
you’re a bastard sometimes
no matter who you are most of the time.)

i grew up smart, and i was cool, i was everything
except what i wanted to be. i wanted
the stereotype — the feathers, the stern and stolid face.
then i gave up and tried to be you, and all i want now

is to know
at last
who you thought
i was.

what did you call me on the day I was born?
did you whisper
a potent name in my ear
that i never remembered, or that

you never said out loud again? should i be
thanking you or shaking you for the name? will it
kill me or make me feel better than i’ve ever felt?
did my fantasy have a root?

come on, dad. spit it out
if you know what my life
meant to you.
give me my footing before you go.