Gold by Thomas Zimmerman

Metallic yellow

Ripened grain

The setting and the rising sun

Teeth-fillings of the elders

Ingots in Fort Knox

The dust and nuggets panned from mountain streams

Dad’s jaundiced eyes in 1967 Vietnam

My hair when I was young

My mother’s, sisters’, wife’s worn wedding rings

The lesson of King Midas

It’s drifting in some rare champagnes

And fancy restaurants will dust their hamburgers with it

I spent my youth near cornfields

Spent my youth near people’s yellow teeth

And what that’s done

Both for and to me

Good as gold

Belief in linking wealth with worth

A country song goes, “You’re as good as gold/And I’m as good as gone”

Some toxic positivity at play

I’ll ask my younger, hipper, blonder poet friend, KD

The sun is like a yolk

A yolk is just an embryo

An embryo I’ve been

My momma’s golden boy

Her one and lonely son

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Thomas Zimmerman (he/him) teaches English, directs the Writing Center, and edits The Big Windows Review https://thebigwindowsreview.com/ at Washtenaw Community College, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA. His poems have appeared recently in Live Nude Poems, Pink Plastic House, and Zero Readers. Tom's website: thomaszimmerman.wordpress.com Twitter: @bwr_tom