Impasse with a Walnut

Shuffling through the damp leaf litter, I look more down

than ahead. Scattered walnuts, intact and in pieces.

I pick up an empty half-husk, the nutmeat settling, I imagine,

into the belly of the squirrel taking stock from a branch

overhead. The shell surface, sinuously crinkled, resembles

a rough netsuke carving of a woman in a kimono

turning her back to me. Flipping the nut over,

we meet face to face, hers a cameo in the concave

interior, eyes black and silent, hair bun run through

with a long wooden pin I wait for her voice to give me

a signal, a clue, some direction but hear only the hollow echo

of absence and outside, in the wind, a rustling

I can’t pinpoint. Back in the nut, her face has become

a softly scalloped ear, all ear, wordlessly imploring me

to speak my mind, but I am speechless too, and ever

at a loss, with nothing to declare. Mutually mute,

our standoff is assured. I toss the walnut aside.

A woodpecker flies off with it. Continuing

on my way, I dare not reach for another.