Worms Emerging from Chestnuts

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I woke up late today.

I dreamt of a squirrel who showed me how to open a walnut with my bare hands. It was very similar to opening a jelly jar. This squirrel had a stash of nuts - walnuts, acorns, and chestnuts - most of which were ruined with rot. Despite this, I was jealous.

I identified two chestnut trees this season. One lives along my bike path to work. It has been many weeks since I took that path; I was not able to harvest these nuts. The other tree lives on the grounds of the old mental institution called 'the Ridges.' This tree yielded to me only 5 edible chestnuts. (I found many nuts that were not fully developed. An informed party told to me a reason why this is: the flowers were not pollinated. Pollination is mainly the job of bees. Why have the bees neglected this chestnut?)

I brought my chestnuts to my home. I ate one immediately. It was sweet and delicious. The remaining nuts I intended to save for many months. Alas! All are lost to me! Every chestnut was eaten by some sort of nut worm. My eyes swept over the nuts one morning to see two larva emerging, wriggling away from their meaty cocoon, white bodies plump with the succulent innards of my precious chestnut. As I gathered the nuts to throw them away from myself, I thought: to save a nut for the future is to live in fear.

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I awoke today and put on my feet a pair of socks - luscious wool socks - that I had been saving for some uncertain future.

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