Sea Currency
       

They say he's pouring money into the island.
I picture coins tumbling down a chute like gravel or cement
a foundation laid with copper and silver
notes insulating cavity walls and slate roofs
cheques and bank drafts under timber floors
so that when a phlegm.y rattle draws me
behind this nineteen-ten Blasket home
and I find shingle piled high
not long hauled up from. a stoney beach
glittering like newly-minted coinage
I think of how islanders filtered
the same sea currency through their fingers
to select tokens to draw lots with
so they could divvy-up the day's catch, the seaweed
or the wreckage of a ship washed up on the shore.

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Copyright © 2016 Nicholas McLachlan All rights reserved
from The Rain Barrel
Salmon Poetry
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission