Treasure

Listen to a reading by Tim Foley:

The dolphins are getting Alzheimer’s from algae blooms
caused by warming waters and toxic runoff

and you could see the bloodstains in Sudan
from space.

The cobalt is mined by children
and the music is made by robots

and the grownups are wondering
where the fireflies went.

It is an elephant with an eyepatch and a prosthetic leg.
It’s a freshly emptied bed in the nursing home.

A hand offers you pills to numb the dissonance,
but you swat it away and howl naked in the thorns.

Somewhere there’s an ibis on a piano
in a junkyard in the rain.

Somewhere else there’s a small boy
who has just learned the word “treasure”.

“Look! Buried treasure!” he tells his dad.
“No. That’s just glass worn smooth by the sea.”

“Is that treasure?”
“No, that’s just a shiny candy wrapper
shimmering in the sun.”

“Ooh! THIS is treasure!”
“No that’s garbage. Put it down.”

And the boy’s vision changes
and he no longer sees the treasure in things.

He runs to join his dad
and they walk together down the shore

through a dying world
of fading wonder
full of worthless beach trash.

“He is wrong,” you whisper
as the blood leaves your body.

“There is treasure everywhere.”

_______________

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