I don't know why I like putting pennies on railroad tracks. There's a small yet indescribable appeal to placing that little copper circle on the long mental tracks. Yesterday I went down to Wayzata and lined up exactly one hundred pennies on the track closest to the water in a wonderfully uneven sort of way. The gaps were all different sizes and it didn't bother me. The sun was warm but the air was cold and it felt like spring to be in the middle.
After my lincolns were put to sleep in the sunshine, I walked the tracks west. A boy held my
hand so I didn't fall as I tiptoed between my pennies and then on down away from the retail stores. I didn't mind that we had to leave before a train came. I do wonder, though, who will find one or a few of my pennies, if they'll rub their fingers over the flatness and distorted imprint of our sixteenth president. I wonder if they'll question how it got there, what kind of person left it waiting in the sun.
Snapshot: Me, bent over the tracks, gently pressing a penny onto the metal train track.
Snapshot: Me, held up on his back, free to everything around me or to just close my eyes.
Snapshot: Me, balanced on my toes, holding his hand as we walk towards where the sun will set.
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