Thursday, July 21, 2005

Lucky Penny

Are all pennies lucky?

Even this one, the one I see when I look down at my feet at the gas station this morning, half in, half out of my car, waiting for the tank to fill?

Even this abandoned penny; dirty and scratched, run over dozens of times by cars whizzing in and whizzing out, impatient and empty, all of us on the move, grasping for a greater piece of the pie.

Is the accidentally dropped penny, the one that isn't worth bending over for, this worthless circle of copper, the very same penny that is meant to bring me luck on this cold, summer morning? What else in my life is good fortune disguised as loss?

In the dream I had a week ago in Hawaii I only remember the words as I awoke, “lucky penny, lucky penny.”

2 comments:

Dale said...

("Oh penny, brown penny, brown penny,
One cannot begin it too soon.")

I'm told on good authority that those are in fact the only lucky pennies. They have to be really lost and disregarded before picking them up makes luck.

Wonderful post. Again. Welcome back!

Unknown said...

I'd like to think that all pennies are lucky. There's just something nice about picking up lost pennies. You wonder where they come from, who held them last and all that. Well, I do anyway. :)