smell of money

To say a dollar tastes like the tin blood
of a mouthcut us too easy. No no, money
is all about smell. It's scent runs closer
to a stubborn patch in the air, a shock of
winter wheat on a forgotten plot. Certainly
a buck can ride up from a bag of fried chicken,
or billow like car exhaust in traffic, burning
your lungs and leaving you breathless. But don't
discount the fragrances money can't buy - like
lillies atop tradewinds, like blackberries on a
shimmering summer morn. If money has a native
scent, it is a tree, hanging from the rearview.
That's the best a dollar can do. The smell of
August pines, of dirt and grubs, of the wildflowers
in the meadow over the hill is beyond money's grasp;
a dollar cannot touch it. Oh, but money wants,
wants, burning like midnight neon as it tries.

the house on farnsworth

Purchased fifty years ago, the
house where my mother grew up
is still shield by waist-high
juniper. Now it is under the
flight plans of Oakland International;
once an hour the house quivers down
to its foundation. The dingy lace
curtains in the kitchen have been
replaced by frills and cotton and
splashes of cornflower blue. Grandma's
moaning fridge was unstuffed to make
room for a white shiny, showroom model.
No more bubbled-over oatmeal on the
rangetop; the last burnt rolls have been
pulled from the stove. Everything in the
kitchen, in fact, is the color of moonlight.
The house awaits a new tenant; it aches
for my grandmother to come home. Never has
something odorless held such a strong smell.