The Banker’s Lamp

My emerald shade has cast a puzzling ivory glow across decades of ledgers
As gnarled hands carefully ink figures that signify a man’s fate
Across slender columns on a lined page.

I have watched fortunes won and lost on the turn of a track,
The roll of dice,
A gamble of land,
All from a distance, of course.
I only see the outcome
Never the game.

I have watched sums carefully
Set aside
So carefully
Saved for that day when
It is time to spend
Rather than to earn
And seen death take the reins in hand,
Proving caution futile.

I have watched as all wealth fled
In a trickle and in a rush
Wasted upon killing habits
Or squandered upon reckless whims.

I have seen it all,
Decades and decades of it all
And I remain unchanged
If slightly dusty
Waiting each day for those hands
To pull a brass chain
So I may aid a pair of watery blue eyes
Behind wire spectacles
Until those hands again
Pull the chain.

 

Note: This is Day 1 because I got started late, and so, I’m catching up.