Bucket Of Coins
So, which way tonight from here to far there
With orange five gallon buckets full of coins
For snacks, and the White Truck's gasoline share?
You'll be lucky to gird that old truck's loins.
Maya, my pet, you'll sleep easy in back,
Us rumbling to morning at the North Coast;
We'll stretch our legs bounding over sea wrack.
Hmmph, in tow returning; that engine toast.
And with luck our chariot will make it
Just in time to see the Moon's overcome
The Sun's, or at least clouded day night lit.
To the eyes, newscasts' drab less bothersome.
Go! Back and forth between eighteen wheelers!
Or stay. Panning for coins is for seers.
DolphinWords
Notes:...last night I had to un-stack the storage boxes in the garage to get to the five gallon buckets of coins...two....that I had saved from the Valley...from tips and loose change...I'd empty my pockets and toss the coins in the buckets and they just sort of accumulated over almost ten years!...and they've been an annoyance to haul around...too heavy to hardly lift...so I've just left them out of the way...and it was too daunting a thing to separate them, roll them, take them to a bank...or take them to the supermarket and use the coin machine...they charge like over ten percent!...so they've been sitting, and casting about where to get gas money for a trip to see the eclipse and back...google maps says it is a fourteen hour drive one way to Salem, Oregon...I thought to just put the buckets in the back of the pick up truck, along with Maya my dog, and be on our way!...but thinking it through, the price of gas being what it is, it would be awkward to count out forty or fifty dollars in loose coins at each gas station stop...then again, I thought, and 'panned' out one hundred and twenty dollars last night from a portion of one bucket tossed into the wheelbarrow...wearing my headlamp, it was an odd pursuit on the front porch step after dark...left off...just left the buckets out front...not likely anyone would bother them...and today this afternoon, when the front of the house becomes shady, I rolled the wheelbarrow back in place, pulled up a folding chair, and began panning again...it just struck me that I was like panning for gold...and it was a contemplation of Lincoln, Roosevelt, Jefferson, and Washington, with the news story worry beads my thoughts turning...it's a perspective we don't have, to touch each penny, each nickel, each dime, each quarter...and my roommates took an interest, one offered coin wraps, and the other just sat right down and helped me...no no no, I said...I didn't want them taking time away from their own time...but H. insisted, and she tells me the story that her husband had a newspaper rack job in Vietnam for awhile, and she counted and separated coins with him all the time...go figure!...her help had it all done in no time...coins separated into paper bags...and waiting to be wrapped......the last line of 'Buckets' could be 'looking for stars is for astronomers'...likely too elliptical a reach to suggest stars and planets and moons are like coins, but what the heck, I'll just make the link here!...anyway, I'll set aside the windfall coin treasure, and in the Fall roll up to the North Coast in leisurely fashion!...I've had this little one day a week job for fifty dollars for the last nine months, and it will end end of August...and after Labor Day the crowds will be thinned...so good time for a rollabout......oh, I'm sorta inventing my own Sonnet form fooling around as I have been...same as Shakespeare's, three quatrains, with envoy, abab, cdcd, efef, gg...iambic pentameter, sorta...the wrinkle I've added, is the first three lines of each quatrain are one view of a back and forth, then the fourth line of each, is response...and the envoy is 'forth'...and 'back'...'Buckets' and last post's 'Lesson' show this real distinctive as the 'forths' are in italics!...so, back back back, and forth, three times...then forth and back...ral!...
:)
DavidDavid
Notes:...last night I had to un-stack the storage boxes in the garage to get to the five gallon buckets of coins...two....that I had saved from the Valley...from tips and loose change...I'd empty my pockets and toss the coins in the buckets and they just sort of accumulated over almost ten years!...and they've been an annoyance to haul around...too heavy to hardly lift...so I've just left them out of the way...and it was too daunting a thing to separate them, roll them, take them to a bank...or take them to the supermarket and use the coin machine...they charge like over ten percent!...so they've been sitting, and casting about where to get gas money for a trip to see the eclipse and back...google maps says it is a fourteen hour drive one way to Salem, Oregon...I thought to just put the buckets in the back of the pick up truck, along with Maya my dog, and be on our way!...but thinking it through, the price of gas being what it is, it would be awkward to count out forty or fifty dollars in loose coins at each gas station stop...then again, I thought, and 'panned' out one hundred and twenty dollars last night from a portion of one bucket tossed into the wheelbarrow...wearing my headlamp, it was an odd pursuit on the front porch step after dark...left off...just left the buckets out front...not likely anyone would bother them...and today this afternoon, when the front of the house becomes shady, I rolled the wheelbarrow back in place, pulled up a folding chair, and began panning again...it just struck me that I was like panning for gold...and it was a contemplation of Lincoln, Roosevelt, Jefferson, and Washington, with the news story worry beads my thoughts turning...it's a perspective we don't have, to touch each penny, each nickel, each dime, each quarter...and my roommates took an interest, one offered coin wraps, and the other just sat right down and helped me...no no no, I said...I didn't want them taking time away from their own time...but H. insisted, and she tells me the story that her husband had a newspaper rack job in Vietnam for awhile, and she counted and separated coins with him all the time...go figure!...her help had it all done in no time...coins separated into paper bags...and waiting to be wrapped......the last line of 'Buckets' could be 'looking for stars is for astronomers'...likely too elliptical a reach to suggest stars and planets and moons are like coins, but what the heck, I'll just make the link here!...anyway, I'll set aside the windfall coin treasure, and in the Fall roll up to the North Coast in leisurely fashion!...I've had this little one day a week job for fifty dollars for the last nine months, and it will end end of August...and after Labor Day the crowds will be thinned...so good time for a rollabout......oh, I'm sorta inventing my own Sonnet form fooling around as I have been...same as Shakespeare's, three quatrains, with envoy, abab, cdcd, efef, gg...iambic pentameter, sorta...the wrinkle I've added, is the first three lines of each quatrain are one view of a back and forth, then the fourth line of each, is response...and the envoy is 'forth'...and 'back'...'Buckets' and last post's 'Lesson' show this real distinctive as the 'forths' are in italics!...so, back back back, and forth, three times...then forth and back...ral!...
:)
DavidDavid
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