Friday, August 11, 2017

James Walton #67 I have an 1872 penny



I have an 1872 penny

with a hole for a band
of copper or maybe greasy leather
tucked away for safe keeping
but perhaps for show and tell
by swooning parents
a lay by for a kid wound up
in the free compulsory and secular Act
or a profuse perspirer in moratoria marching
in days without warnings about sunburn

this morning

three kangaroos sailed in front of me
on the Hallston timber cutters’ road
out of the disused community cemetery
like an equally spaced trifecta
the last early 60’s mint issue
polished by a chamois late dawn
their leap a stamp pad in gilding bronze
a hard won print for excellence
running from the dreary suits

this evening

as I worked the nineteenth
and twentieth century between fingers
no forgiveness for the coin of the realm
rubs through this late Winter’s night
the dead in aspiration rose
to hold those politicians’ wrists
as their grasping hands
clung through the decimals
for their parliamentary benefits


6 comments:


  1. Cheers, James.
    All 3 glorious.
    How a coin joins them.
    The roos of course displaced.

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    1. Those pennies with the roos seem so exotic now, and still so shiny, like hope.....

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  2. reminds me of the seven sleepers and their old coin
    ... and the 1966 dollars and cents and you brochure I found recently, which I notice sets no end-date for the changeover period - which I take as suggesting they countenanced the idea that the whole thing might fail and they'd go back to LSD

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    1. Hee hee the lsd of in come the dollars and the cents on the......1966

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