E pluribus unum

Now he is a bald head
on a commemorative coin,
but once
young French beauties
shined that head with their
soft hands.
He was such a cutey,
they thought,
such a funny,
sly old fox.

Benjamin Franklin in Paris,
seducing the crowds
with his coonskin hat
and his ideas of freedom
that were like some
trumpet blast
out of mythic Greece.

And before that, before
1776
with its guns and fifes,
there was still the
man of ideas.

The man of business,
squeezing cash out of
every tool he handled,
encouraging frugality
in his little almanac.

And the man of science,
poking God’s blue skin
with his high kite,
encouraging divine sparks.

But that man,
that very real flesh
is long gone,
dead dead dead,
like all of us eventually.

His ghost sits on a coin
with a strange look
on his face,
like he can’t quite figure out
how he got there.