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The book The House of the World has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and is now available on Amazon.

Month: February 2016

The Coin

Digging in the garden,
trenching and scooping,
I prepared the earth,
softening edges in my angular life,
soothing the blanket of trembling sleep.
And there,
as my mind wandered,
as it drifted between bluffs
and wells,
a bright silver moon glittered on the dirt.
As if placed there by a wand,
materializing out of the silver
in the sky.

A coin,
untouched.
A dime with Mercury’s head.
An eye that took the darkness
out of mine.
Yesterday my peasant soul
had asked for a coin,
a talisman to cheer my gloom,
something to acknowledge my prayers,
my vulnerable spirit.
And this day too,
I searched the ground
going to the grocery,
a little charm I said to myself.
Something to soften the hardness
of our logic and causal obsessions,
saying,
magic is behind it all.

God exists,
flowers think,
and people are butterflies
with invisible wings.
Then this smiling star.
This light from the soil,
a coin,
the earth telling me not only tulips
but wishes,
grow in the heart and become true.
A coin in exchange for a smile from an old man,
boy who is faithful to his dream.
Put me on your table
and remember how bright I am,
your home is my happiness.