ManicDDaily

Unredeemed

They were green as cash and though I glued them
in their rows, I never got a chance to redeem them,
careless enough

that once I went to J.C. Penny’s Lost and Found,
down in the basement like the sheets,
looking for my bag, brown and tassled–
but instead retrieved a black patent leather
I’d lost some years before,
my Sunday School purse, unsnapping it
to my book of saving stamps, though the Tru-Value Store no longer was
in business–

Redemption is something I find hard
to get right–
take certain things I’ve done=-
matters of life and death–at least, of a good death–
acts for those I loved–a taste of honey, an insistence
on no more pain, even just the lending
of a rose-fogged lens, doctored
remembrances–
I could line them up in a book,
but there’s no cashing in

acts shelved low in the heart.
I might wish they could be lost,
but they’re forever found–acts that seem to have acted
on their own, but that, in fact, were acts taken,
and the price I pay is a price
I will pay always–
the price of love.

***********************************

Here is a very belated poem for Fireblossom’s Friday (Shay’s) prompt on With Real Toads about redemption.  I am also linking this to the Open LInk Nights on With Real Toads and dVerse Poets Pub.  

I have revised since posting a couple of weeks ago as I do not think people really “got” the poem the way that it was written–the problem with posting too early.  It had read

and the price I pay is a price
I will pay always, the price
of loss, the price of love, not
an even exchange.