If money grew on trees,
How happy we’d be then,
The children rolling in dough,
The fathers raking it in.

With holdings in the branches
Showing a big return,
The Trees would drop a fortune,
We’d all have money to burn.

As autumn leaves, however,
We find the poor still poor.
The falling stocks in trees
Are swept away from the door.

So what became of the boy
Whom teachers had to scold,
Who stared and stared out windows
Into the lands of gold,

Where after school he spent
His lonely afternoons
And shuffled home knee-deep
In rubies and doubloons?

He listens to the leaves
That raffle in a squall,
Still dreaming of a world
That profits from the fall.

Greg Williamson

Copyright (c) 2005 First Things 159 (January 2006): 27.