The Innisfree Poetry Journal

www.innisfreepoetry.org

by Therese Broderick

ON A TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY

    ~for my numismatist


Darling, for decades you have lived
with ancient Chinese coins, square holes
punched through their centers.  Collecting,
cataloguing, weighing their merits.  
You chart their journeys more certainly
than you could my own.  Or I yours.  
Love eludes calculation, enduring apart
from the grooves of figures and words.  
We are that space contained by the metal
of marriage.  Tonight by candlelight,
let's count out twenty pieces, then add
fifteen more for our daughter.  Many coins
are flawed:  off-balance, chipped, worn.  
Of course we keep them—they, dearest of all.

 



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