image from poetess' personal scrapbook
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Betty Jean, a teacher’s daughter~ saved copper pennies in glazed ceramic: a piggy bank, fat-bellied, painted with cornflowers. Named her Pigtail her ceramic ears, one forward, one back, listened for pennies~ its snout chipped clean where Aunt Betty dropped it. Pigtail was magical, filled with the clink of childhood promise and deferred desire against porcelain walls. Save your pennies, Betty Jean, her mother chimed when the Depression struck. Through those years Pigtail swallowed copper pennies and watched wallpaper fossilize into sepia landscapes. Decades later, Pigtail sits on my shelf— a hairline crack running through one ear, waiting for Aunt Betty and for the coins that never come. No coins inside now~ just the hollow thunk when I lift it, heavy with Aunt Betty’s absence.
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