Jeanine Walker

Chestnut = Night

In the yard, friends
gather chestnuts
fresh from the tree.
Hesitatingly,
I approach. Do they
know me, the friends
or the chestnuts?
One woman holds
out her hand, a chestnut
inside. She offers it to me.
It is dark and small,
a whole world.
When I open my palm,
it is empty. In it she places
the chestnut. Bowing,
I accept. I close my palm.
The night disappears
inside my hand.

Jeanine Walker is the author of The Two of Them Might Outlast Me (Groundhog Poetry Press, 2022) and has been recognized with a 2025 microgrant for Korean poetry translation from Seattle City of Literature. Her poems and translations have found homes in Poetry, Denver Quarterly, Pleiades, Poetry Northwest, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. Jeanine teaches poetry and publishing in Seattle.