The Measure of Wealth

Published in issue #7 of Beach Chair Press.

Wealthy property owners in my seaside
town all love how quaint the houses are—
then tear them down to make instead
mansions with glass walls facing the sea.
There is always construction here.

I pass a massive home being built and look
at the vehicles parked alongside—the builders,
the electricians, the plumbers. I know their
homes are nothing like these. They install
luxurious palaces and go home instead to modest

dwellings in towns that do not face the sea.
I wonder whether they begrudge their customers’
homes, their customers’ money, their customers’
leisure. But then I think about what I do, put
words to paper, ephemeral, soon forgotten;

when they feel a need for meaning, they can drive
past these mansions, inhabited only a few weeks a year,
or rented by the week to even wealthier visitors—they
can drive past, and say in their hearts,

I made that.