March 18, 2025

the last two pennies in America

“I found our compound,” I write to my friends,
point them to a website that leads to the edge
of Prince Edward Island, on which five vacation cottages
face the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Years ago, flying to Paris,
I couldn’t get to sleep, watched moonlit landmasses
passing thirty-nine thousand feet below. It all looked,
from that distance, like the Ice Ages were still here,
forlorn and uninhabitable as ever. Now, I zoom in on a map,
roll the Maritime names on my tongue—Cavendish,
Brackley Beach, Stanhope, Dalvay-by-the-Sea—imagine
us on red Adirondack loungers, sharing a meal,
raising glasses to our good fortune. It is like this,
an oblique happiness dreamed up with a few clicks,
then minutes later, in an urge to travel
as light as possible, I’m shedding my wallet
of all receipts of my recent time here—gas station,
Walgreen’s, eye doctor—and when I get to the change
bulking up the middle aisle, I think of that part of the U.S. Mint
gone dark, how on some distant early morning in North Parish,
sipping strong Sumatra with my cohorts, we’ll sift memories
as if we were shaking sugar on a cake, and the sun will just be rising
and I’ll wonder if I’ve got the last two pennies in America
in the green wallet upstairs, smashed between credit cards,
the word “liberty” etched in print so small, I can barely read it.