To the editor:

This poem was inspired by the announcements that the U.S. Treasury will be discontinuing the production of new pennies.

If you haven’t got a penny, a ha’penny will do

And if you haven’t got a ha’penny, then God bless you

The ha’penny long gone, and now the penny, too

As lost to us as lira, groat or sou

He didn’t have a penny to his name

Nor nickel either, though it doesn’t sound the same

No more penny dreadful books, no penny-ante games

And no more is penny pincher a sobriquet of shame

How do we know the sky’s not falling if Henny Penny’s not around?

No more penny wise, pound foolish — and so my bankers frown

No in for a penny, in for a pound — my fiscal health will be unsound

See a penny, pick a penny. But none can now be found.

Can Penny Lane be in my ears and in my eyes

If its namesake token’s met with its demise?

No penny-in-a-bag to keep away the flies.

The penny loafer is passe; the shoes we’ll buy must tie.

A penny saved is no more a penny earned

The former stuff of bureau drawers that never will return

Today you ask, “A penny for your thoughts?”

But ask again next year and you’ll be spurned.

When it rains it won’t be pennies from heaven that will fall, I fear,

As minting stops and climate change effects appear

And that which cost a pretty penny when I ordered it last year

May in future call for crypto coin in sums for me to dear

The shiny Lincoln penny, its values out of date,

Which now in forced disuse must share the fate

Of the ducat and doubloon, the Spanish piece of eight,

The cast-off coinages of many nation-states.

The dirty penny in a White House filled with crime,

He’s the one who said the Lincoln penny’s had its time

No role for Honest Abe’s old face as we see inflation climb

And all too soon we’re back to, “Buddy, can you spare a dime?”

James Benedict Kobak Jr.

Keene Valley