Walnuts

 Plump as plums
 they hang in a green shade.
 Pick one. Peel back the husk and find
 a shell there, pocked and wrinkled
 like some distant world.
 

 You’ll need a knife. Just press 
 your blade against the lateral line
 then prise the halves apart
 and there, in a nutshell
 is a brain.
 

 Packed tight into an inch wide skull
 two waxy hemispheres
 each ridged and swollen
 into lobes and cleftsó
 and each the image of the other.
 

 Remove the nut and place it on your tongue.
 Dark and resinous, the taste
 stirs shadows in your own brain shell
 of something long forgotten – 
 garnered sunlight
 the slow insistent pulse of growth.