Portside

O Best Beloved, they're true, those tales

    come down to us from Way

Then. In The Age of Money, the money

    vanished--overnight it did, as if

vacuumed through a funnel into deep space.

    No one had it, the money. It didn't stew

in a bank or go forth and multiply.

    Buried in the yard of the mad man, it was not,

not bent into wads and stuffed

    in the robber's pocket. It had not burned

had not melted; no guttering molecules slid

    back to earth, their nuclei hot and

circling the memory of money.

    O Best, it went Gone. It went Ain't. It went

as if it had not been, ever, as if our lives

    had been nothing but dreamt things

and we weren't even the primary dreamers.

    Beloved, now dream again. It's late.

Close your eyes and think of that enchanted time

    when money flowed from our palms like

blood through our veins. Then dream

    of The Age Before That, when we had only

to point and golden fruit dropped

    in our hands. And the most ancient

of all realms, imagine: The Era of Wands.

    We waved them and, Lo, it appeared--

whatever we longed for.

    And we never went hungry yet, somehow,

we always felt hunger, for there was always

    more where that came from, and always

we wanted more.

Suzanne Lummis' poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Ploughshares & The Hudson Review. Her latest collection is Open 24 Hours. She has edited various anthologies, including Stand Up Poetry and Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond. She is also the recipient of George Drury Smith Outstanding Achievement in Poetry.