A Christmas Miracle?
Christmas
Day,
In
the roadway,
I
found a Lincoln cent
That
failed to glint,
because
it was chocolate brown,
Not
copper red, but color of the ground.
“See,” said I, “It’s a penny.”
My daughter agreed with me.
But on coming home
The penny had metamorphosed;
Not a cent, as we supposed.
It was a dime,
Colored by dirt and grime.
Can it really be,
Like a rock into a tree,
That with a little time,
A red cent became a brown dime?
Why not,
I thought.
It happened once before,
In days of yore.
A man became God.
How odd!
For the last several years on my daily walking route of 2.5 miles, I have been writing a hasty rhyme each time I found a coin in order to commemorate the finding. I recently self-published a modest volume of these rhymes for the family.* They are not serious poetry, but aim at being whimsical. The above rhyme, however, neither made the book nor aims at whimsicality. It falls somewhere between simple rhyme and poem that takes aim at saying something serious about religion in rhythm and rhyme.
Writing whimsical rhymes is something to do and it keeps my mind active, through what has been a difficult year.
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University
*For other coin rhymes, see Charles W. Hedrick, Lost Legal Tender in the Streets: Ditties, Rhymes, Whimsical Verse (Storyworth; 2023).
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