A Child’s Garden of Values

by Charmaine Frost

Once I imagined that the dusk, each day,
Would dust crags golden and let fall a shower
Of gold coins that the high sky's bronze vault
Could no longer hold. That, of course, was why
The morning lawn showed and showed off
A wealth of dandelion heads not there before —
Pure gold disks abutting, overlapping, in tiers
Rising like piles of newly minted, pure gold coins.
So I thought in awe until they all, by years
Wiser, scolded, "Dandelions are only yellow.
Don't ever call one gold; they come too freely
To have worth, financial or of other kind,"

And so demoted the sky to miser and riches
To mere yellow weeds best mowed over, fool's
Gold, a counterfiet specie. Still, when by drops
The day's luster slipped away, I wondered where
All those colored chips had fallen, onto which
Green laps the largess had randomly splattered;
And wondered why no touted pansies or petunias
Could so multiply overnight and grow glowing
Like new money or a thousand sprinkled tiny suns
As one disgraced mere weed always could.