Richard Cole
Among Billionaires
The bones are beautiful, now fossilized
and polished to the essence
of raptor, an overwhelming skeleton
on sale today, all razor teeth and heavy legs,
bone translated into rock and rock
into natural art, the tiny forearms raised,
as if pouncing on a lesser prey.
Nobody survives a billion, as we know,
but here we are, at the private auctions
of London, Hong Kong, LA, where bidding starts
at a million. New money floods the room
from global accounts, and the backrow agents
work the phones, whispering to the superyachts
at ease in Saint Tropez, Monaco, Dubai perhaps.
The auctioneer brightens. “At this point,” she says,
“it’s just numbers,” and everyone smiles.
“We have three hundred. Do I hear four?”
Frozen climbers inch their way
through the dead zone to the summit
on an Everest of their own fierce making,
prayer flags ripped savagely
by the sub-zero wind. They’re patient,
devout in their way, and she teases the price,
following their knife-edge of competition,
cold blood against cold blood, far more than greed,
as they try to create what they can’t control,
a monument to immortal hunger and the final bid.
A pause. Then a sharp tap of the gavel
and quiet applause. The number is impossible
but that’s what we share, like the day not so long ago
when a mountain flew out of the sky and the earth exploded
and all the last creatures looked up with a slow,
reptilian wonder.
Richard Cole is the author of three books of poetry: "The Glass Children" (The University of Georgia Press), "Success Stories" (Limestone Books), and "Song of the Middle Manager" (winner of the Grayson Books 2021 Poetry Book Contest, Grayson Books). He is also the author of a memoir, "Catholic by Choice" (Loyola Press). His poems and essays have been published in The New Yorker, Poetry, Hudson Review, The Sun Magazine, The American Journal of Poetry, The Main Street Rag, The Penn Review, and various anthologies. Honors include an NEA fellowship, a Loft Mentor Series award, and two Pushcart Prize nominations. www.richard-cole.net.