On our front porch, in the easy chairs
where the day leans back and sighs,
we keep a jar of coins.
Not the kind you spend in a hurry -
but the kind that ask you to pause,
to turn them over in your hand,
to read the worn faces
and the faded, stubborn dates.
We’ve brought them home from faraway places,
tucked into pockets and purses -
Canada’s maple leaf,
Germany’s eagle,
Great Britain’s queen who has traveled
the years like a steadfast moon.
Austria, Greece - bright metal echoes
of streets and cafés,
markets and train stations,
voices carried on the breath of another language.
A coin from Great Britain carries
our trip to London +
the bustle of Covent Garden,
the warm clatter of cups,
the quiet joy of The Three Stags.
Germany’s coin holds my army years in Ansbach -
long gray winters,
the grief of losing wife and kids,
and the slow, surprising grace
of meeting The Steady One.
Austria’s coin recalls the Alps,
Innsbruck wrapped in clean mountain air,
and the calm peace of the city center,
where cobblestones seemed older than time.
Coins from Greece shimmer with sunlit ruins,
the taste of olives and sea wind,
and laughter in narrow alleys
that have since fallen silent -
yet when the breeze shifts here on our porch,
we swear we hear it again.
The American coins carry
the dates of our own story.
A penny from my earliest years -
Elmira’s sidewalks warm under my bare feet.
A nickel from ’72 still carries the dust
of my first Little League season -
cut grass in the air,
the sharp crack of the bat,
the beginning of a love for baseball.
A quarter recalls the summer the flood
tore through Elmira…
half the town underwater,
childhood streets turned to rivers.
The coins from 1963 are quiet companions -
my exact age, my exact weather -
walking with me from the first mile to this porch,
clinking softly in the pocket of my years.
The ’84 quarter rings with the arrival
of our beautiful red-headed son,
his tiny fists already stubborn with life.
The ’87 dime glints with our matching daughter -
her laughter spilling like sunlight,
her first steps marking a path
we still follow in our hearts.
We have learned that coins, like people,
can outlast the moment they were made.
They hold not just where or when,
but who we were when we touched them -
and who we have become since.
Evening comes down slow.
We watch the neighborhood hum by -
children with chalk on their hands,
a man walking his slow, old dog,
the smell of someone’s dinner drifting through the air.
I reach into the jar,
feel the cool weight of the world we’ve gathered.
The coins shift with a soft, bright clink -
like rain against a window,
like time passing through our fingers.
We wave to a neighbor,
the porch light flickers on,
and somewhere in the street,
a child’s voice calls home.
The night gathers around us,
and the world we have lived
shines quietly between our hands.
GBS
2021
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