A Silver Bit For My Thoughts
By Applejack
They say Las Pegasus’s streets are paved with gold,
So I walked down the main stretch of road,
And looked for that gold,
But I found
Glass and asphalt and dirt and
Plastic and t-shirts and discarded gum wrappers
And dead ravens and flattened squirrels with the eyes popped out
And loose screws, tires, and orange fragments of mesh construction markers
A landfill of items that were discarded
And no gold among the trash heap treasures
But walking in a casino parking lot
I did find a silver bit for my thoughts,
To make a wish on, to choose my destiny,
Heads or tails,
This tiny piece of silver, worth all of the gold,
Worth all the miles of highway I traveled,
Gold I panned in hidden rivers,
Gold I searched for with metal detectors,
Long nights of shoveling in the back yard,
Treasure hunts I went on to find the Lost Gem Mine,
And all that gold stashed somewhere at the Mirror Pond stamped AJO.
This one-bit marker was my salvation,
My answer, my promise,
A new luck addition to my highway purchased wallet,
A wish maker; I wished “Can I win a few rounds of
Blackjack? Win it for me, lucky silver bit, please!”
But instead I found another silver bit,
Another one-bit diamond in the rough
And this time I pocketed it for luck.
And the more I walked the more silver bits I found,
Two bits. Then five bits. Then ten bits.
Then 20. Then 50. But still no gold.
Just luck and some gems when I really needed them,
And a silver bit in my pocket for my thoughts.