Poem: "Of Gold and Standards"

[ysabetwordsmith]

This is the freebie for the November 2020 crowdfunding Creative Jam. It was inspired by a prompt from alexseanchai. It also fills the "sense of time" square in my 11-1-20 card for the Sense-Ation Bingo fest.


"Of Gold and Standards"


It started when people
got tired of carrying goods
or leading cows or simply
trading time for time.

They wanted something
easier, more convenient.

So they came up with
the gold standard, and
later on, minted coins.

The coins became paper,
then faded into electrons,
losing the last tangible link
to what had come before.

The people lost something of
their sense of time and more
of their sense of each other.

The more abstract the value
became, the less it made sense.

It got harder and harder for
them to keep track of it, and
the economy created by it made
more and bigger problems too.

As rich people sucked up
more and more of the wealth,
though, other people rediscovered
the ideas of barter and time exchange ...

and the golden snake caught its tail in its teeth.