Jean Nordhaus

 

Old Money

Not “aristocracy” or “class”
just these old coins saved
in a rusted tin among paper clips,
staples, rubber bands, dust.

The shaven image
of childhood’s President
has grown a fuzzy beard of lint.
The beauty on the Liberty dime

(Wallace Stevens’ quiet wife)
has lost her luster. And the nickel—
on the nickel, Thomas Jefferson
seems to be rubbing away.

What’s to be done with my
secret hoard? Old money.
It has slept a long time
in the dark losing value.

Shall I shut the lid and
let it sleep another thirty years?
So much is lost or seems to be
ebbing away. America. In God

We Trust. So pluck it out,
brush it off, and let it mingle
with the new. Let it know the touch
of hands, the thrill and lust

 

of commerce. Spend it. Spend it.

 

Long After the Leaf Was Gone—

Almond Joy, Good ’n Plenty,
Hershey’s Kisses, M & Mmmm’s.

 

The names were full of lux
and happiness, small sins

 

that stained the hands
and made hosannas in the mouth.

 

The little boxes shot from the machine
behind the velvet rope at matinees.

 

My favorite-—leaf-shaped, minty,
each plump gemlet sprinkled

 

with a sugary crust—what was it called?
I was in love with Roy Rogers. Gene Autry

 

not so much. He looked like
my orthodontist, who was mean

 

and smelled like soap—Spearmint Leaves!
Yes. Heavenly, the way the green

 

gum lingered, leaving pockets of residual
bliss between the molars long after

 

the leaf was gone. Life was good and time
was plenty. All the cowboys sang.

 

A Glove

It was raining hard
when I left the house
and climbed into the cab
and raining at the airport when I
paid the driver and stepped into
the morning wet and dark and I
felt calm and capable as I wheeled
my luggage through the terminal
and realized I’d left my gloves
and hurried back and found one
in the road beside the curb but not
the other and I went back inside
and called the company for I
had plenty of time and I could
learn from this and teach myself
to remain calm and accept things
as they come and anyway
it was only a glove
(a fine leather glove
with a cashmere lining)
and it was not my hand
my living hand and not
your death or a war or the end
of the world we know
is coming and I am
here and whole and it
was only a lifeless glove lying
wet and crumpled
in the rain without its other.

 

Five Words

My index finger traced
one word into each of five
fogged bathroom window panes:
Dear. God. Let. Me. Dance, I wrote
tracing a perfect toe shoe
in the empty 6th. Five words
(a secret between God and me.)
Flat feet dashed the dream

 

and faith evaporated as glissade,
jeté, plié gave way to cautious
iambs tripping over thin blue lines.
I made the leap from pas de chat,
bourrée to syllables, these pale
transparencies that opened
on the living world,
remembering the child I was

 

the life we led within
that house, and how, as steam
dispelled, my five words
disappeared, opening to a clear view
of what lay beyond: a patch
of grass, the pebbled walk,
branches of the dogwood tree
in flower by the kitchen door.

 

Joseph

Mornings in the shower
when I soap my neck, I picture Joseph,
from first grade, pale blue eyes,

 

a ring of crusty grit around his neck—
not on the playground
or at games, but at his desk

 

in back, a boy too large for our class
dressed oddly in a threadbare
suit, stigmata of neglect.

 

Did no one love him? Did no one
treasure him or teach him how
to bathe and wash his neck?

 

Not that we were cruel, as I recall
but he was clearly other—we
the cosseted, the tended, clean

 

in our back-to-school plaids —
surging with immigrant energies, while he
was drawn from older, wearier waters.

 

What became of Joseph? And why does he
still visit me from long ago, rising
through rain the morning splashes

 

weeping against the shower glass?

 

Geriatric

The table seemed too large
for the eight of us still living,
longtime hiking comrades
in decline: B with his cane
and silence, G, lassoed in Parkinson’s
as in a tangle of old vines, L,
newly widowed, pumping out
gloom like octopus ink, and S

 

our birthday Queen, two weeks
from gone, yesterday too weak
to stand, but here today, triumphant
dressed and sitting tall, mad thatch
of post-chemo bristles rayed
around her face like the headdress
of a Mesopotamian goddess.
Slowly, we embark again

 

on the old stories, growing younger,
suppler, more resilient with each telling—
the path that sheered away beneath
our feet, the time we missed the tram
and had to scramble hours downhill
in the dark to Chamonix. Someone
came up with a cupcake, K
produced a candle and we sang

 

in rusty chorus to our dying friend
who seemed amazed at everything.