Walnuts from the Old Ranch

1 Minute Read Time

This photograph shows a close up of an old ranch that has had significant damage done to it. — Photo by Mario Verduzco on Unsplash

Split and hulled—
I’ve eaten the small brain

half by half, prizing it loose
from the brittle inner architecture.

First, an oily sweetness 
on the tongue, and then

the tannic dryness, 
its bitter signature

that lingers like the taste 
of losing what you fooled

yourself to thinking 
you possessed.

Beside the house
where you will never go

again, no doubt the tree
still grows and each fall casts

its dull hail down.
I keep these shells.

Side by side
they stare up at me




like blank eye sockets
fixed in their hollow shape,

formed to hold the promise 
they once held.

Derek Robbins

is a poet and educator from Missoula, Montana. His experience includes over ten years of academic teaching in addition to work in banking and healthcare. Here at USF he teaches creative writing, ecopoetry, and technical and professional writing. His poems have appeared in literary journals including The Cincinnati Review, Copper Nickel, and Gulf Coast. He is currently at work on a book-length poetry manuscript, Bitterroot, which grapples with questions of family, identity, masculinity, and the American West.

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