Pecans

We gathered them from the ground 

behind the house

dropped by trees taller than Jack’s beanstalk

which you told me all about 

under the cats playing with yarn

on the wallpapered downslanted ceiling upstairs.

I did not know the poetry of TV Guide then,

or the elegant minimalism 

of your steel nutcracker

as you worked through the liverspotted shells

in rhythm to Lawrence Welk.

Those shells resembled the balls 

Ole Miss players carried

more than did the pale bits of foam, 

for my electric football set.

The soft nuts inside those shells

looked like mangled smoker’s lungs,

but I loved them raw 

more than the pies you baked them in.