Horse Chestnuts

The hard-polish, bank-floor
sheen of horse chestnuts
fall after fall showered us

with naval mines
fertile in the gloom,
each erotic as a Madonna

or the rosary beads of nuns.
My shrine lay deep in the closet
as the trees refused their vintage,

leaves baked in winter’s air.
In the dawn of March,
I opened that armory

to a spring moldy with verdigris.