Harp-Strings Poetry Journal

New publication: Harp-Strings Poetry, Winter 2012.  
Editor: Madelyn Eastlund

Home from peddling turnip greens,

Daddy poured it out like small worries

on the kitchen floor.  Mama, who could

all but see germs passed from hand to hand,

wouldn't have it any other way.

That she never took a shine

two what we children were so taken by

had something to do with always having to

count it out to somebody else.

But me and my brothers... I wish

you could have seen us in the money...

coin striking coin, coins rolling

like runaway wheels across fields

of green and brown linoleum.

You would have thought us proper tellers

the way we stacked together what goes together

--pennies, nickels,quarters, dimes... 

We knew all along the silver,

as Daddy called it, was not ours to keep.

Ours was the feel of it, round and smooth,

the weight of it heavy in the palm of your hand.

Ours was to count it and to know great sums.

And having this, we were content

to wrap it in little banker's sleeves

that tell (in part) what it all comes to.

                              --Betty Spence

"In the Money" received first place in the 1997

National Federation of State Poetry Societies

Founders Award category and was pulblished

in NFSPS' 1997 Encore.