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.