Postcard Thin

Fool’s Gold

At seven, I was as thin as a postcard

of Waikiki beach.

I could turn sideways and disappear.

(If I wasn’t mailed someplace by accident)

Any lighter, any more flap in my arms,

and I could have flown.

People tried to stuff vegetables into me.

Brussels sprouts for example.

And potatoes.

They bandied the word “carbohydrate” around

like it was some kind of cure-all.

Meanwhile, I tapped along to my xylophone ribcage.

Doctors took a look at me.

They figured that, somewhere in my DNA,

was a glossy snap of Diamond Head.

Mostly they shook their heads.

But not too violently

in case the breeze they made blew me away.

My mother mostly worried.

My father watched his dreams dissipate.

I’d never be a football star.

Not even a mascot.

Unless my team’s name was the Playing Cards.

But I filled out eventually.

Bones turned into totem poles of calcium.

Flesh clung to my sides.

Muscles popped up in the expected places.

Even my head swelled

when I did well in the classroom.

By the age of eleven,

I had caught up with the other boys.

I was in the state of normalcy.

No longer Hawaii.

Intrepid miners, we ten-year-olds

dug into the cliff-face with small shovels

and willing fingers,

uncovered a vein of iron pyrites

but thinking we’d found gold.

In the hot Queensland sun,

that mineral glittered a bright yellow.

So how were we to know

it wasn’t precious?

There seemed enough for us

to buy the world.

The more we held it in

the palms of our hands,

the more we spent it in our heads.

Then came the squabble

over who found it first

and how the bounty was

to be divided up,

that stopped just short

of actual bloodshed.

And, once home,

our parents quickly

put us wise.

“Fool’s gold,” they called it,

while scoffing at its worthlessness.

And yet such a brilliant day

as I remember,

so much more golden than foolish.