Roosevelt Dimes

Lyrics

Just ten cents.
The smallest silver.
Hardly any weight at all in my hand.
Strange.

April twelfth, nineteen forty-five.
The air in Warm Springs, Georgia, goes still.
A cerebral hemorrhage, the radio crackles.
A hush falls over the kitchens, the factories.
The man who held the country in his hands
is gone.
And the country holds its breath.

And they put you on the smallest coin.
The largest man we ever had.
A profile facing left, looking back.
The March of Dimes, come home to roost.
Every child's contribution, every hopeful prayer,
pressed into silver, here in my hand.

Henry Morgenthau didn't wait.
By May, the papers had the story.
A tribute you could carry in your pocket.
John Sinnock went to work, his engraver's tools
carving a memory from a photograph.
From grief to currency in two hundred and ninety-three days.
Fast, like the nation needed to hold something real.

And they put you on the smallest coin.
The largest man we ever had.
A profile facing left, looking back.
The March of Dimes, come home to roost.
Every child's contribution, every hopeful prayer,
pressed into silver, here in my hand.

I think of all the envelopes.
Addressed to The White House.
Filled with dimes.
Sent by children who could walk
for children who could not.
This isn't a monument of stone.
This is a receipt.
A promise kept.

January thirtieth, nineteen forty-six.
His sixty-fourth birthday.
The first one falls from the press,
cold and perfect.
The torch of liberty on the back.
The olive branch. The oak.
Smallest coin.
Largest debt.