My Two Cents

Here is a grain of salt, a pocket full of posies, ashes,
crumbs for retracing our steps (if only we could), or better:
pebbles immune to hyperactive birds: gravel, no—
gravitas to keep us on the ground
in winds of change.

This climate has served us well for so many years
on nights like these, cool enough with the windows open,
with the moon pulling through, but just barely,
given the clouds, our certain ceilings,
our wonderful walls.

Here is a two-sided coin. Remember those
lucky pennies we saw at the bottom of “It’s a Small World”
—Disney’s desideratum (how it made Mom cry)—
effigies of Lincoln, too small to save but
still worth a wish?

David Rock

David Rock has work appearing in The Carolina Quarterly, Poetry East, The Bitter Oleander, New American Writing, Sugar House Review, Atlanta Review, Image, and elsewhere. An Idaho native, he teaches Spanish and international studies at Brigham Young University-Idaho in Rexburg.

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Friday Morning, Long Island