This is the way it happened.
This is exactly the way it happened.
I sat in a public place and the little
girl wanted to operate the machine
that squeezes pennies and makes
them look like flat pieces of copper
that used to be money.
Her parents gave her fifty cents
to operate the machine and she
put the two quarters and the penny in.
Then she turned the handle and I said,
“There’s going to be one less penny in the world.”
And the woman said, “I know how it feels.
My name is Penny. We don’t have pennies
where we come from any more.
The government too them all away.
Everything is rounded either up or down.”
“I’ve studied quite a bit about the man
depicted on them,” I said and I said the name.
“That’s something else we don’t have anymore,”
Penny said, “Integrity and Character.”
The little girl took her penny
and I found mine.
♠