Revisionist Poetry – The Lay of Copernicus Wiffledown (finished), v.3

Copernicus Wiffledown was much admired—
a well-to-do gentleman who kept a pouch
of wrapped surprises beneath his coat:
a mitten for a red-nosed passerby,
a loaf slipped through a shuttered window,
a bright tin soldier for a child who’d lost one.

They called him the Christmas-Day Scrooge—
not because he grudged, but because he counted:
each gift catalogued, each ribbon given a number,
hoarded in his closet until the hour he chose;
then, with the solemnity of bell-ringing, he spilled them out,
so lavishly, so carefully—so lovingly enormous.

Once, he’d said, his own pockets had been empty,
and the memory of that hollow stayed like a draft.
So he collected small kindnesses as others collect coins:
a warm hat, a second-hand book, a repaired toy—
and learned the arithmetic of consolation: one gift + one face = the town made whole.

In time his coat grew thin from use, his hands more certain;
he gave away the very pouch he’d once guarded, and the town—
having feasted on his strange abundance—named a lane for him.
They speak his name when the lamplights go low: to wiffledown, a verb now,
meaning to count and to give, to keep careful score only so you may spend it all.