This Year Alas, Your Wallet

This Year Alas, Your Wallet

Every time you travel down to Mexico

you lose something, sun-struck calamities

afternoon misplacements while you nap,

worries about work happily lost

along with intentions to diet, drink less

and this year alas, your wallet,

its leather and lost pesos adrift

among the lavish bougainvilleas.

How will you buy new intentions

when money, driver’s license and credit

cards may float on dark cobbled streets?

Even now some miscreant may be

celebrating inside your monetary skin

flashing his sudden winning hand

diamonds dangling from his sombrero rim

as he speeds through crowded plazas

laughing at one-way signs,

waving your license, collecting fines.

A sudden knock at your door, there stands

the ragged taxi driver from last night

a wide gap-toothed smile, your wallet in his hand.

Your life unexpectedly returned to you

shining, collected and complete

like a holiday photograph album.

Money, license, credit cards intact

all that was lost: your assumptions

prejudices and preconceptions.

By Margaret Zielinski