Only Money

Explain to me how some people have old
money— old meaning venerable and established, 
and despite all known hindrances, multiplying 
in the dark. Interest compounds thickly through 
decades, not musty nor feeble or infirm. 
When they call to it, it always comes 
obediently, never protesting or throwing 
them off when they ride it like a magnificent 
stallion all over their green acreage.

Meanwhile, I walk through life rounding up 
restless chickens, nervous that every rustle 
in the hedge means a fox, snout twitching 
at the thought of eggs heaped like zeroes 
in the henhouse, ready to be carried away 
and reduced to nothing and more nothing. 
My kind have always been praised for our 
industry. From sunup to sundown, bent over 
in the fields— planting rice, gathering 

strawberries and garlic, lettuce and 
asparagus; pineapples, sugarcane. The kind of
bounty heaped on crystal platters and pristine 
tablecloths in Rockwell's Freedom from Want. 
When the overseer rang the bell, my people 
lined up for paychecks made more meagre 
by illegal deductions. And yet they passed 
the hat to send a son to college, mail 
uplift to families in their village. 

How can I not respond when one of my children 
calls to ask for help with rent, an insurance 
payment, gas? Some friends say I'm an enabler, 
by which they mean I'm feeding a crippling 
dependency. Or they'll say, Do what you 
want; it's only money— suggesting the more 
important thing is to take care of what 
needs taking care of. But for those who've 
always had enough, it only means the loss 

of any money should not cause undue 
agony. My elders spoke of certain types 
of debts written on water: a ledger 
with lines and entries never legible, 
except perhaps in the heart's memory. 
Perhaps these calculate a different currency: 
one that envisions how things might someday 
return to hands resting in empty pockets, 
that hopes for a different kind of saving.