poetry, Volume 4 number 9, October/November 2002, © 1993 by Doreen Fitzgerald

Defining Matter

GENUINE LEATHER, the wallet said,
stamped in gold between the coin purse
and the identification blank.
I was only seven, and thought quite hard
about the creature who'd lost its hide
to cover my paltry sum.
Picturing a tiny pig,
small, but valued for its skin,
I thought there ought to be a law,
against the slaughter of genuines.
Laws, I knew, keep people straight
but when I learned to drive, I swerved
to miss a genuine in the road
and hit a tree instead.

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