Notes About The Poem
image of 'old' bank building, Garland, Texas, from texashistory.org
Vault of Human Days
I was raised from brick and limestone pride
in the year 1900—broad-shouldered, square-jawed,
built to guard coins like a stoic sentinel.
Back then, people entered with hats in hand,
voices hushed, boots dusted from the road,
hope tucked carefully in their coat pockets.
I watched farmers deposit the year’s sweat,
watched widows count bills twice,
watched young men borrow for a first horse,
watched shopkeepers tuck away dreams
in ledgers neat as Sunday handwriting.
Then came the roaring years~
silk dresses, quick fortunes,
men who swaggered in with cigars
and left with loans larger than their sense.
I felt the tremor of every risk.
The Depression arrived like a cold wind.
People lined my lobby with hollow eyes,
asking if their savings still breathed.
I held my breath with them,
my vault colder than winter stone.
Decades rolled on.
Checks replaced coins.
Cards replaced checks.
Screens replaced tellers.
Now people tap glass rectangles
as if money were a rumor
whispered by electricity.
I’ve seen prosperity, panic,
jubilation, war, ruin, reinvention~
and through it all,
I’ve stood here,
a witness of every transaction
of hope and fear.
Yet even now, when someone steps inside
to ask about a loan, a future, a chance,
I feel the old pulse stir in my beams~
that familiar tremor of human hope
seeking shelter in my stone.
A century has worn me smooth,
but I remain what I was built to be:
a keeper of stories,
and a witness to want.
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