The Buckeye by Rita Dove

Lincoln’s weather during the spring of 1988 was mild. With scant snowfall and temperatures ranging from the mid-40s to upper 60s, it was an ideal time for planting. On April 1, the Lanoha Nursery was selected to provide and plant trees for the spring Master Street Tree Planting Program, which laid out a plan as to the location, quantity, and diversity of trees to be planted on Lincoln’s streets.

The 1988 spring issue of Prairie Schooner featured Rita Dove’s poem “The Buckeye.”

The Buckeye
Rita Dove

We learned about the state tree
in school – its fruit
so useless, so ugly

no one bothered to
commend the smudged trunk
nor the slim leaves shifting

over our heads. Yet
they were a good thing to kick
along gutters

on the way home,
though they stank like
a drunk’s piss in the roads

where cars had smashed
them. And in autumn
when the spiny helmets split

open,
there was the bald
seed with its wheat-

colored eye.
We loved
the modest countenance beneath

that leathery cap.
We, too, did not want to leave
our mothers.

We piled them up
for ammunition.
We lay down

with them
among the bruised leaves
so that we could

rise, shining.