Riches

Once when the river ran slow sunlight, makes stones look like gold,
I threw into the stream a silver engagement ring, among the gold
it looked trite like a poor cousin wearing leftover clothes.
I saw her kiss another man at a restaurant I could not afford to take her,
my misery was total and my disgrace deep.
How deluded I had been, she proffered gold to my silver.
I looked at my ring in the water it looked like a sliver of leftover moonlight
after the ancient gods, bacchanalia.
Forever I will not speak of this to her, a young man's romantic heart.
The river is now a road, and the romance is dust on a pond,
but in the evening glow you can, among the gravel, see a silvery shine
and my heart is glad.