In third grade you learned to fold a dollar
so that Washington’s head
looks like a mushroom, later
about wheat, buffalo, Augustus
Saint-Gaudens. You used beech
leaves for play money, tore them
off living twigs, brought an Aruban florin
to show-and-tell, felt the sound
of a Canadian quarter hitting the Coke
machine’s return as the sound
of thirst. Every coin its own
flavor and weight, every olive
branch, every Roman nose. Remember
when you learned how one thing
could stand for endless others,
how with a few creases a man becomes
a destroying angel.

— Michael Metivier
(Poem from the July 2023 issue of Poetry©)