Intraday Trading

The woman from the stock market program,
mouth like a ripe pomegranate, speaks to me

from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange
in a voice of garbage cans and broken glass,

a one-woman ticker tape parade. I think I have
fallen in love. I'm afraid she has bad news for me.

The Market has been stair stepping down
all day, afraid of higher interest rates

and a yawning trade deficit. All that beautiful
money gone!  She speaks of it with such

tenderness, such sorrow. Wounded and wounding,
she is in my blood. I see her in my mind's eye

on a cold mountainside, bleating a prayer
to a silver coin of moon. Ancient, she has

watched many empires fall. Alexander bowed
his head before her oracle, Caesar slept

at her feet. Relentless, pitiless, without remorse,
she promises to be back at 4:30 with the Market Wrap.

Steve Klepetar

If you have any comments on this poem,  Steve Klepetar would be pleased to hear from you.