Small Change

Though our late queen's no more at the helm,
We can still spend her coins of the realm,
But I find my mind reeling:
Can pennies have feeling?
Does big change small change overwhelm?

© Celia Warren 2023

It's been a long day as I've been awake since sometime between four and five this morning. It was a very cloudy start to the day, unlike yesterday. Then I woke, briefly, just before 2.00am. I stepped outside in my dressing gown to enjoy the brightest, clearest star-filled sky that I've seen for years. It was a delight to stargaze, but my joy was complete when I looked south and saw a meteorite. It was moving slowly enough for me to watch it progress from right to left just below Orion. Its tail was long and white, its head glowing brightly until, suddenly, it burnt up in the earth's atmosphere and disappeared. Knowing that it was formed by debris from Halley's comet left me awe-struck with the connection through time and space. For that moment, all the self-inflicted woes of humanity shrank into a dot of stupidity in the light of the grandeur of the massive universe. Why does insignificant mankind think itself so clever? Why does mankind think it rules the universe? That we should have such power! We are a flash in the pan of all life exisiting (or no longer existing) under our star, the sun, which one day itself will die, however many windmills we plant.

But back to money (!) -- what really rules us now -- and the Tiny Tuesday challenge from host Pinkhairedlady with the prompt of 'coins'. I was sitting in Mrs B's car while the young master slept in the back, and little Miss B and her mum were at a Hallowe'en half-term holiday special play session in Grantham. (We joined them briefly when TYM woke.) My purse here is balanced on the dashboard.