Janece and the Wheat Back Penny

She still searches for that '43 copper
like nothing ever happened.
Heads still look the same,
but turn them over tails
and you get a handful of memorials,
Lincoln like a ghost
floating between the columns,
somewhere above the black shaft;
although he got it, too,
Honest Abe.
Sometimes in her searching
wheat comes up
(food=love=peace),
then she looks for a date
to find the ice of '58:
Nothing could grow on that landscape.
One day she'll hope to turn and see
Lincoln in his stony shroud;
heads will still be heads,
but tails a tiny mushroom cloud.


(Arkansas Magazine, Arkansas Democrat, 1986)