I don’t want to carry it in my heart
That Sunday afternoon on Crooked Creek
Pat my brother and Bobby my cousin
Gather walnuts from the dry stream bed
Throw the black husks onto the bank  
My job is to put them into a feed sack
And keep dragging it along as I fill it up
I want to be a big like they are
But I become stained from the resin
Hands clothes shoes – all of me it seems
This solo memory of the three of us
The way they come to me when I cry
Take me to the shop next to Bobby’s house
Show me the magic of mechanic’s soap
 
So soon life would deem them dead
In ways the young died then: car & war
Both twenty-two when they are gone
If I do not think of them for a while
They’re suddenly in my field of vision
The picture of them holding my clean hands
As we head back out through the stubble  
And fetch that lumpy bag of nuts