Bawbees

Beneath the black soil

(in your dream attic),

the unspent coins asleep

lament their unspent wealth,

hoarded by a corrupt cleric

and buried in his panic

(or put away, rainy day style,

by your over cautious dad).

Hardly the best hoard

of gold and silver bullion,

but bent copper coins

bearing the odd heads,

not emperors

(perhaps your uncle Fred),

but mundane, bull headed leaders,

whose Hanoverian dullness

has diminished by centuries

in the earth.

 

Cursed treasure of a Viking age

laid under peat with indecent haste,

spoils of a gambling frenzy

in the Georgian Age,

behind a slant wall in a gin den;

the child wept when it was put away,

weeping as if it was a dear one

laid to rest.

 

So, sullied currency, corrupted,

laments its lost worth,

lies like cancer in the ground,

unfound but unremittingly evil

for the sake of what it might have done,

a metal seam of unfertilised dreams.

Groats underground, miser sewn,

clipped coins under the cobbles,

trampled by breadless men;

banknotes in the mattress

making for sore sleeping for the

princess who stashed it there,

nightmare safe she thought.

Or the wealth of long ago,

bent nickel tokens,

farthings, half crowns,

more elevated denominations,

precious in their potential for love,

the holder hearing the brash silver

rattle in his important leathern purse,

like bones shaken against the

fate of death.

 

The hard boiled alloy waits discovery,

the treasure trove jackpot

(tantalising beneath floorboards),

will not decay entirely,

but wait the day of finding,

unspent in the loam,

but in the meantime only

for keen eyed moles

in the sovereign soil.

Awaiting the day of finding,

perhaps for one who has no need,

who wants as the hider did,

seeking the things that can’t

be bought with any currency.