Day 128 | House of Shadows. Home of Simile by Eavan Boland

House of Shadows. Home of Simile
Eavan Boland

One afternoon of summer rain

my hand skimmed a shelf and I found

an old florin. Ireland, 1950.

We say like or as and the world is

a fish minted in silver and alloy,

an outing for all the children,

an evening in the Sandford cinema,

a paper cone of lemonade crystals and

say it again so we can see

androgyny of angels, edges to a circle,

the way the body works against the possible—

and no one to tell us, now or ever,

why it ends, why

it always ends.

I am holding

two whole shillings of nothing,

observing its heaviness, its uselessness.

And how in the cool shadow of nowhere

a salmon leaps up to find a weir

it could not even know

was never there.