Portside

He left me hundreds,
hundreds of hundreds in bundles of ten
sectioned off with paper clips; I stuck them
deep into the toe of an old sock,
which I then secreted in a pocket--
his old sock, of which I wrote rueful poetry,
about his thrift, his big hunger,
his inability to gain weight . . . but I digress.
The cash is still rolled up, what little's left
seven years since his death, crises
biting it down, one at a time, to a tight
cigarette: a leaky roof, a grandchild's shoes.
I didn't know cash could fad
in the dark, but the rust around the clips
is no surprise. Some nights I fret
the Feds will call them all in, hundreds
hidden in musty cupboards, forgotten boxes,
they'll want to shred them, issue
new ones, they'll want to know
where I've been keeping this stash.
Or even worse, I'll die before it's spent
and my kids will gather my clothes
for Goodwill and never poke around
in th pockets, knowing I keep crumpled tissues,
movie stubs. Maybe not so bad a dénouement,
his hundreds spinning out like stars
into an expanding universe,
ransoming the wretched at the edge of hell--
the way his life got saved by American soldiers
unlocking the gates of the death camp.
The way he tried to salvage mine.

Florence Weinberger is the author of six volumes of poetry, most recently These Days of Simple Mooring. Her poems have appeared in Nimrod, Poetry East, Rattle, the North American Review, The Los Angeles Review, Shenandoah, and numerous anthologies.