Coins

My change: a nickel caked with finger grime;

two nicked quarters not long for this life, worth

more for keeping dead eyes shut than bus fare;

a dime, shining in sunshine like a new dime;

grubby pennies, one stamped the year of my birth,

no brighter than I from 40 years of wear.

What purses, piggy banks, and window sills

have these coins known, their presidential heads

pinched into what beggar's chalky palm--

they circulate like tarnished red blood cells,

all of us exchanging the merest film

of our lives, and the lives of those long dead.

And now my turn in the convenience store,

I hand over my fist of change, still warm,

to the bored, lip-pierced check-out girl, once more

to be spun down cigarette machines, hurled

in fountains, flipped for luck--these dirty charms

chiming in the dark pockets of the world.