Pecan in Its Shell

trenched pattern set deep

into its brown, pieces

secured in dark, a whole

thing living out its days

not meeting the sun, only

collecting its streaks across

the round of its thin patina

rinsed in a graying luster

two pieces of wrinkled fruit,

each a mirror of the other, one

named memory, and the other:

might; not one precluding

the other, but two pieces

marrying their skin, covered,

brown from brown, tapestry of

the grafting, left neat as a token

(available to us, just beneath)