Pennies Gone Off To Heaven Poem by Kevin Patrick

Roll up your scratched bronze copper mints
and conceal them tight in pirate’s trunk
there'll be no more shuttling for any brass zinc
in the great white north where they’ve been furloughed

From the grumpy Atlantic to the jealous Pacific
Through the prairies in the middle of Saskatchewan
You'd be better shilling charities with old hieroglyphics Parceling vintage doubloons now the Penny is gone

It faded with a bang of a long distance whimper
Terminated piecemealed into histories dustbin when the finance minister was picking out slippers
He crunched up numbers and had them neutered

so stick them on the walls for bric-a-bracs keepsakes
Festooned in the garrets of misers hoary attic They’ve been ostracized off to times acquiescence Irrevocably sold down the epoch of static

Now you can travel Labrador to Old Yellowknife
Hop on an eighteen wheeler on the 401 But you won’t find a copper in a five and dime Temporarily silenced in a pursuers till

For the only way you’ll see them is a museum Where future generations will soon forget The very definition of a penny earned Is when the 43 parallel lost its common cent


So Goodbye my chestnut farthing coronet
There'll be no pennies for your thoughts
Just empty piggy’s with undernourished stomachs
Frothing on the bygone like Molson Labette’s

Now keep them as nostalgias staple
Make them shine in the eye till the end of time
With our nations obverse as the maple
So our descendants will never pine

When all the pennies have gone off to heaven