Troy Weight - Mar 11 2021

 

Troy Weight

Mar 11 2021

My father kept silver dollars.

When we cleaned out his desk

at the end of a long life

they came to me.

He was not a hoarder

or collector of coins.

But I understand their appeal

to a child of the Depression

and a hard-won world war,

who lived with uncertainty

and through unnerving change.

Their size and heft.

The troy weight

of precious metal they contain.

And the noble images

with which they're engraved

that speak of permanence

and continuity.

They are rare now.

And inflation has made them valuable,

pure silver

from when a dollar was really a dollar.

They may talk of real estate,

but no form of wealth

is more real than this.

I rarely use cash.

My savings exist

in pixels and bits

on a server in some bank.

And compared to a thin dime's

utilitarian metal

a silver dollar feels like the manhole cover of currency,

which takes a crowbar to budge

and is built to last.

I could cash them out

for a substantial profit.

But I am my father's son

and prefer to keep them as talismans,

unspent

in a tall clear glass

on a corner of my desk

where they can't help but be noticed.

In a time of unsettling change

they are reminders of the past,

when money was money

and a man's word

counted for something.

And in a time of weak leaders

and their credulous followers

they honour my father,

a man who knew the value of a dollar

and the genuine article,

preferred substance over idle talk

and always kept his promise.