One afternoon of summer rain
my hand skimmed a shelf and I found
an old florin. Ireland, 1950.
We say like or as and the world is
a fish minted in silver and alloy,
an outing for all the children,
an evening in the Sandford cinema,
a paper cone of lemonade crystals and
say it again so we can see
androgyny of angels, edges to a circle,
the way the body works against the possible—
and no one to tell us, now or ever,
why it ends, why
it always ends.
I am holding
two whole shillings of nothing,
observing its heaviness, its uselessness.
And how in the cool shadow of nowhere
a salmon leaps up to find a weir
it could not even know
was never there.
