When Love Strikes The Unlucky Rich Poem by John W. McEwers

I lost thirty bucks on a poker game with those
I thought were friends.
But friends wouldn't take you for all you have, would they?
I don't even smoke but they wouldn't even give me a cigarette before
I took my leave.

I stepped in a puddle on my way down the road.
The only one for miles.
It soaked through to my socks.
My best pair.

I found a quarter on the ground.
Success!
I flipped the quarter and I lost it in some weeds.

Not ready to go home, my bed feeling
unwelcoming,
I wandered to the park far away and found
a swing.

I never swung so high as I did that night.
I felt like I might swing into the moon.
It was beautiful, that lunar landscape, full of sand traps and long gone lakes, it was where I wanted to be.

And then you called out hey you.
That could only mean hey me.
I turned to see a shiny new quarter in the form of a girl.

Want to come to my place, she said,
it's near by.

And I knew, by the moon, I had found her.
My money that was gone was now mine.
I could do without my thirty twenty-five.
I was, for a time, the richest man alive.
Her address, if you believe, was Lover's Lane number three zero two five.