Picking Up the Peed-On Penny?
On the Amtrak headed south,
I pep step to the head
about an hour before Petersburg, Virginia.
The Richmond crowd now settled in the club car.
While trying to keep my aim and flow steady
in the lateral wobble I look down
to notice a superstaturated shining penny
just below me and next to the commode base.
Do I pick it up like I usually pick up pennies?
Or do I let it lie and continue
to take the essence of passengers
headed to the Southland?
I contemplate the issue thinking
I presently do not have a major need
for any superficial luck…
plus I have finger cuts on both my hands.
What would my Mississippi grandfather Banker do?
Thinking about what he would have done,
I notice Abe faces north.
I gingerly rotate him with my shoe to face North Carolina.
I then remember my Tennessee grandfather and WWI vet
once told me that most urine was sterile
and that he often peed on his feet
to keep from getting trenchfoot.
I return to the toilet about a hour later
to find the penny with Abe’s face
once more facing North
and away from the civil war crater I am now passing in Petersburg.
“Next stop, Rocky Mount, North Carolina”.
I get my bag from the overhead,
walk to the front of the car as directed,
visit the head, wash my hands; greet the platform a penny richer.
**
Baby Rabbits
My shaved head sophomore boy,
looking and acting like a macho construction worker
or a red neck farm hand,
which this summer he happens to be,
cuts off the John Deere and gleefully runs to the barn
to show me a baby rabbit.
“Look at this little guy I found in the high grass”,
a young brindled bunny cupped in his big greasy hands.
I tell him to return it to the exact spot the rabbit ran
from the tractor so the Mom can call the kit
back to the nest before the owls fly.
Without question, he does so.
Making a “rabbit nest” from the cut broon sedge,
he returns to the farm house to tell me:
“I heard the Momma squeal just before she ran,
little bunnies running in all directions!”
I watch him go the book case asking:
“Where is Steinbeck’s OF MICE AND MEN?”
Sunrise the next morning I creep down to the nest,
the dew laden cut grass muffling my footsteps.
But she flees once more,
leaving her bunnies stretched out,
ears back and feet forward…
a five point black spotted sleeping star.
