a puddle that looks like it's coated in plastic

a puddle that looks like its coated in plastic

from the way the gloaming light hits it,

the sharp shadows wrinkling the white sheet

cast by the top halves of wind-tossed leaves,

it can’t be pocketed―this wet, ephemeral coin―

except by calling all such currency mine.

thus, the silhouetted street scene surrounding it

must be considered but one piece of a thick,

extra-sartorial outfit I, and I alone, can wear,

something that seems to others to be just air,

yet is to me a world-sized, form-fitting bank,

albeit one whose transfer slips must remain blank.

I can’t buy anything with what I’ve deposited―

not with that puddle, or with the confetti I saw with

dawn and the kids as we drove through a gauntlet of

tall elm trees celebrating having worked enough,

or with the partially sunset-lit buildings downtown―

but still I must pay a tax on this income to the crown.

aesthetics is a zerosum economic system,

a pyramid scheme where anomalies enter a prism,

recruiting neighbors then waiting in growing bands

to be white light, unaware they’ll never get a chance,

for parts cannot be the whole―thus the poignancy

in each’s claiming it can empty god’s vaults for me.