Juglans Nigra

  We had no words for what we found

Taking the air behind your house that night:

  Speckled with idle window light,

     Something pale green and round.

  Smooth to the touch and cold as stone,

It gave no scent. We passed it hand to hand,

  Laughing, and could not understand

     What little we'd been shown.

  Years later and too late I learned

How a black walnut looks and how it holds

  Its heavy fruit within its folds

     And how it must be earned.

Matthew Buckley Smith was born in Atlanta, Georgia. He earned his MFA in poetry at the Johns Hopkins University. His poems have appeared (or will soon appear) in Beloit Poetry Journal, Think Journal, Linebreak, Iron Horse Literary Review, Commonweal, and Measure, as well as in Best American Poetry 2011. He lives in Baltimore with his wife, Joanna.