Tickertape Millionaire

the money buried in the yard

was like the poetry buried in your chest

not all of it would be recovered, some of it

lost forever

a dog is only pregnant for two months at a time

if you broke me open then

it would have been like the guts of piñata spilling

onto concrete

you’d have to dig deep to hit the marrow, to

suck the fat

we left a marker there

for ourselves to find later

but the landscape has changed

the unknown

has come to live and eat

and hibernate all over again

the alluvial sands of the job, the wash of traffic

the love you made in your backyard

the terrain all looks like a bad haircut and

who’s to say where it has gone to, the heart

pumping veins of gold

up through the earth?

where is the baby that you once were?

when your dad first resented you

and your mother held you close?

where is the poetry that your mother harbored

all those months?

buried just below the surface

like a million bucks

the answer to a lifelong riddle

it won’t be easy

to find

By Walker Rose