House of Shadows. Home of Simile

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.