Michael T. Young offers a meditation on beauty and value, past and present, via a thoughtful parallel.
—
Counting Change
The moon this morning lingers in the light
above the industrial landscape,
a white coin paying my passage into the day.
How much it costs to get to the next moment,
how high the price was to arrive here
from all the way back when I was seven,
collecting coins and held a liberty nickel from 1884,
worth a few dollars, and wishing it were
just one year younger and worth so much more,
and feeling how the value of that year
would weigh in my hand, a nickel
worth three hundred dollars,
how it meant something then
that today, thirty-six years later, means
this moon is so beautiful and bright
I stand and just look, and am late for work,
and keep the bosses waiting.
Whatever the cost, it’s worth every nickel.
***
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