Money

There once was a fear I can name: it is money,

not romance, not art, not a crisis of honeyed

dramatic despair,

but the rent and repair

and the count of each bill stacking up, which is funny

only to people who don’t have to stare

at the numbers each month in a plain plastic chair

with a pen and a screen

and a tight space between

what is earned and what leaves, and I state it this way

because this is the subject and not an array

of symbols or moons: I am talking of pay,

of the cost of being alive every day,

of the fear that a slip or a fever or break

in the hours I sell will immediately make

a hole I can’t patch. I am writing it straight:

I am worried about my material state.

This concern is not coded, disguised, or made grand.

It is cash. It is work. It is what I have planned

failing fast if a number is wrong. I expand

on it only to say I would like solid land

underfoot. That is all. I am naming the theme:

I want basic security, plain as it seems.