The ten-cent piece was on the ground
In the library parking lot
When I spotted it just before sunrise.
I looked around.
The parking lot was empty;
Just this single coin
With the schooner Bluenose
Facing upward.
I looked around again,
But I was alone.
Did no one else know that literally
There was money just sitting on the
Ground for anyone to pick up?
Well, I am not one to pass by free money.
I picked up the coin and turned it over:
Queen Elizabeth II
But now she’s gone and we have a king.
Perhaps new dimes will have an
Image of King Charles III.
I put on my glasses and read the date on the coin:
1983
That means the coin is made of 99.9 percent nickel.
But it is not a nickel coin.
It is a dime, minted in Winnipeg.
The dime is forty years old.
But I am older.
I wonder what I was doing at the precise
Moment this dime was minted.
Riding my bicycle?
Reading a novel?
Attending geography class?
Sleeping?
I imagine the many places the dime has traveled.
I imagine it stuck in a woman’s change purse as she traveled to France.
She would have looked in her purse,
Smiled at the coin that she could not use
On the Paris Métro.
When she returned to Canada, she would have used
The dime for a phone call.
Afterward, perhaps, the dime lived years
In the vault of a bank,
Rolled up with 49 other dimes,
All minted in different years.
So many years, the dime would not
Have seen the light of day,
Hidden in purses, and banks, and pockets,
Lint frequently brushed off it before
Being used as exchange for goods or services.
And now my little dime is free,
Hiding in plain sight on the asphalt
Of a parking lot,
About to experience a beautiful sunrise.
I mean to take the coin;
It is money after all.
But I hesitate.
Someone will eventually pick it up,
Probably even later in the day,
But it will at least have this one sunrise.
I place the dime back on the ground.