She can tell you exactly when the stems on the wild nuts were loosened from the trees
By ancient distant relatives, like Biboon, whose sole purpose in life
Was to provide for her and her family endlessly in a cascade of generations
Falling one upon the other in a history as vast as the continent itself.
 
She will sit across from you at her small table
And she will finger each of the nuts loosely in an open bowl
As though passing life itself onto each of the bristly husks
Before passing them to you as gifts of joy and sustenance in a tradition as fluid as time itself.
 
Her fingers have always coaxed outer husks from those shells before the task becomes dry and difficult
Maximizing every movement and opportunity to store away the preceding months of fat and plenty
Putting away sweets and fruits and seeds heady with the fragrance of growth and summer’s solstice and oil-based stores of sunshine
With meats and fishes and pollens and leaves and flours and tubers.
 
She can tell you exactly when she tripped through the close firs and birch
In search of fungus pushed up like her mother’s fingers prodding her from relaxation and slumber,
Like a steady-handed parent coaxing each growing season into adolescence and the acquisition of survival
By learning to love one’s resources, to celebrate one’s resources, to dance around one’s resources, to fondle and imbue with forever one’s resources.