Coin of the Realm

There is a city below a hill
that was once my home.

"Look kids, it's the Lights of the City!"
my mother would cry, capital letters in her voice
as we crested the heights
returning after bed time,
windows rolled down and a river
of late summer air blowing across our faces.

We would be bleary and sprawled out
on the folded down seats of the beach wagon -
but we would pull ourselves up
and shed blankets,
grasping the back of her seat
peering around the head rests.

And then
framed through the windshield
the trove of red and yellow,
white and green, blue dancing:
all moving or not moving -
the magic burst out before us -
we gasped at her powers.

I knew then that I was of royal birth -
my mother an exiled fairy queen
able to summon mystery from the ordinary.

Too young to know the free lunches
each day at school were not tithes
I was entitled to as a prince,

it wasn't until I was a teen that I learned
the coin of our realm bought nothing
in the cold kingdom we were banished to.

There were days when she would stare out the window
and I could see her strength fading.
I would try, as children do, to assure her.

Secret, secret I learned I must be -
in this world of willfully mortal men
living in cities below hills.

I speak to the rain
and the wind between the leaves -
the icicles hanging from the gutters
in the winter dawn, fire in their hearts.
Sometimes I draw out fireflies in the summer
long after my daughters should have gone to bed -
my princesses,
eyes filled with sleep, reaching to be held.

"Look!" I tell them,
"You only need to look and you will see!"

and quietly, I whisper, I pray:
"Choose to see. Choose to See!"