Currency

In third grade you learned to fold a dollar

so that Washington’s head

looks like a mushroom, later

about wheat, buffalo, Augustus

Saint-Gaudens. You used beech

leaves for play money, tore them

off living twigs, brought an Aruban florin

to show-and-tell, felt the sound

of a Canadian quarter hitting the Coke

machine’s return as the sound

of thirst. Every coin its own

flavor and weight, every olive

branch, every Roman nose. Remember

when you learned how one thing

could stand for endless others,

how with a few creases a man becomes

a destroying angel.