Brown penny

The king lying on Cuba Street sculpted head and crown ermine robe the imperial gaze now just history. There goes a foot on his face rain coming poor man it’s all over for him no one will pick him up now no one cares. What was it worth the brown penny in the rain nineteen sixteen twenty years before he dies forgotten like everything else nobody cares any more worn smooth by the sailor’s fingers unreadable even by the blind bread for the poor saved in a tin. There’s another old man shuffling along the street yelling cursing pushing others aside to reach down and grab the penny rubbing it dry on the sleeve of his jacket. It’s good luck for him after spending the day in the sun in the back room of the library thinking about gin and whiskey turning the coin in his pocket. Earlier he asked me for some coins to get the bus to the hospital his old overcoat smelling and his stained fingers with long grimed nails taking the coins from my hand. Well the king is dead the drunk has his money and the coin he found worth nothing. That’s how it goes the royal bones rubbed smooth over time by the poor farmer the smithy and fisherman poor women feeding a family placed on the eyes of the dead to pay the ferryman buried or maybe stolen by the undertaker. I feel my own form wearing away like the penny on the road everything goes that way lost or thrown away worn down until there’s nothing left something about time or going waves lashing rocks the wind on the trees the knife on the whetstone the smooth touch of a ghost of someone who was there then gone. If I sat with the drunk in the rose garden out of the wind I would find out about time and the wearing away of the body of southerly winds that come in cold roofs torn from houses ships ripped on the reefs. It all goes by slowly but downwards, always downwards. There’s a room for him somewhere warm and dry far away where he’ll sit waiting for the train. What is that flare of light in the sky coming and going what is a brown penny worth?