Has rolled off the U.S. Mint
assembly line in Philadelphia,
presumably with others
of its kind, though, as its
New York Times obituary
noted, it was more or less
worthless.

“Not even penny candy” can
be purchased any more with
the thin pseudo-copper coin,
having long since given up
up most of its precious metal
in favor of zinc-coated steel.

Still, the penny “was the going
rate for thoughts,” its obit said.
“It could sometimes be pretty
and other times arrive
from heaven.”

And though some 250 billion
of the Lincoln-faced discs
still exist, that they cost more
than 3 cents each to make
spelled their doom at age 232.

I think of you, my dear, jingling
the once-ubiquitous pennies
in your pocket, sidelining
a particularly shiny one
to place in my palm each time
I cut your hair. It’s still my
going rate—a penny or a kiss.
Nowadays you generously
deliver both.

And I, along with so many of
my fellow Americans, have
mostly taken for granted
this tiny bit of legal tender
like so much of what is fast
disappearing from our world.

I vow to stop each time I spy
a penny on the pavement
and pick it up, regardless of
how much in-God-we-trust luck
it might or might not deliver
for the rest of the day.

I promise to cherish its
enduring legacy—Liberty—
embossed near the spot on
Mr. Lincoln’s head where
the bullet must’ve gone in.

Long may equality, freedom
and justice for all somehow
survive in this land still
filled with so many of the tired,
the poor, the huddled masses
yearning to breathe free.