If Money Grew On Trees Poem by Troy Cochran

If money grew on trees
replacing all the leaves,
turning yellow in the fall,
or not ripening at all,
littering up the ground,
slowly turning brown,
getting soggy from the rain,
and brittle by degrees,
blown into the streets,
and clogging city drains,
I could not possibly account
for all of these.

We'd all be rich, but we'd be drowned
by all the treasure on the ground:
impatient for the ripening,
exhausted by the raking,
raking, raking,
always losing a percentage to the freeze.

If money grew on trees,
be they hundred-dollar bills,
I cannot help but wonder:
would I come to dream about
that other wealth, and long forgotten hills
beyond the measure of my eyes
to count? Would I miss the leaves
that so abundantly
endow me now?