I’ve just remembered recently
that my stepfather – before he
died, before he was sick in
bed never moving and before he died,
before his cancer and
before he was sick in bed unmoving and before
he died – liked to carry
a money clip of exactly
one thousand dollars
and at the end of the day
replace what he had spent
with new money from the day’s
earnings, from sold tobacco or beer
or gasoline, and he’d fold the cash
tightly into the front
pocket of his jeans (quite surprising
how small one thousand dollars amounts to
some days) and carry it with him (quite
unnecessarily, I always thought, though he
seemed to think the money essential to
who he was).
    I suppose this helped him
feel secure – helped him
feel important or more
like a “store owner.”
It helped him feel like a businessman.
A real asset to his
community. A hero. A wealthy
human being. Someone worthy of
respect.
    If he were alive today, if he
hadn’t shrunk
into the body of death,
then you could tell him he
was all of these, with
or without the money clip – 
with or without the thousand
dollars – with or without
a sense of security, a sense
of himself beyond the
clip.
    I could never tell him.
A stepson could tell him,
but not this
one. So convinced was I that he
did – did indeed – 
need the clip of money that
I never saw him. I never asked
for his advice before it was
offered. I never listened to what
was very well and always indeed
offered, and I never voluntarily
touched him, or he me, until his
person was so close to the surface
of his skin that he could no longer
count out change, could no longer
strong enough to put anything into
or take anything out.

    And this is no metaphor.
It pisses me off that you might think it is.
Because this is the way things were. No sense
listening to the bells. No sense listening to
the wind through the bells. No sense listening to
the atmospheric pressure driving the wind through
the bells. Just listen for a moment, will you?
The bells are just bells. The money clip
just a money clip. The man much more than he
thought he was. More than we
thought of him. And less too.
    We, you and I, are not smart enough
to know ourselves, or others
smart enough to know others.
It should be enough to know
ourselves. To know others.
It should be enough that
this hand reaches out
and you feel it.

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