Money, by THOMAS LUX

A paper product. We say it’s green

but it’s not, it’s slate green, drained green.

New, it smells bad

but we like to sniff it

and when we have a relative pile

we not only want to inhale it but also look at it,

hear it buzz

as we work with our thumbs

its corners like a deck of cards.

A wall of it would be nice, in bricks

like you see in the movies

when vaults get robbed.

And those beautiful--so tiny--red, blue threads,

capillaries, cilia, embedded

in the texture of the paper (that secret

which most thwarts the phony money men),

those threads

like river valleys on a distant planet,

rivers with no end, no source,

like steep ravines in an otherwise flat pan

of a landscape. Look long

and deep enough

at a piece of paper money

and you will see the heaven you were promised,

there, which we look so hard into,

to the very bottom, depths of which

we are called

by the riverbed, the ravine’s bleached stones

calling us down: money, money,

paper money.

From “Split Horizon” by Thomas Lux. (Houghton Mifflin: $18.95; 81 pp.) 1994 Reprinted by permission.