mmmmmxlvi

A Wheat Penny

i pause for just a moment when i
come across a wheat penny, wond
ering whether or not to include it
in the stack of twenty pennies i 

am presently counting up to stack
beside the half a dozen or so
stacks of twenty pennies apiece
that i’ve counted thus far.  when

i was a little boy, my grandfather,
who was a numismatist, would get
excited when he found a wheat
penny.  they were old then. and

rare.  he’d be almost as excited as
he’d get when he found an arrow
head out in one of our pastures.
but i never got more than a penny

for a wheat penny.  even though
his excitement was so many years
ago, and they seemed pretty rare
then.  i go ahead and stack the

wheat penny with the present roll
of twenty, making it the eighth
such stack. and then i keep
counting and stacking more pennies.