Indian Head Nickel by Pepper Trail

My grandfather gave me a nickel
Old, Indian head, buffalo back
The Indian looked sad like my father
Big nose, worn face
And like my father, never spoke.
The buffalo, hump-backed,
Heavy-headed, braced into a hard wind

Don’t lose it, my grandfather said
Don’t spend it.
Then, later, he died
I didn’t spend it, but I lost it
Crawling beneath the barn
Or through a hole in my pocket
Or in the back of a drawer in a house
That we lived in for less than a year

Today, in a junk shop, I found
The buffalo again, and the Indian
In life so close they were one thing
Filling the empty pocket of the continent
Now, forever, never touching, they live
Only on two sides of the same coin
Treasured until lost again

# # #

Pepper Trail’s poetry has appeared in Rattle, Borderlands, Atlanta Review, Spillway, and elsewhere. His collection, Cascade-Siskiyou: Poems, was a finalist for the 2016 Oregon Book Award in Poetry. He lives in Ashland, Oregon, where he works as a forensic ornithologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Photo: Andrew Krueger