Marie Harris
COMMON COIN
“I remember my dad used
to...tell people
that he gave the Old Man a shave and a hair cut.”
David Nielsen, official caretaker, son of
Niels:
“The Old Man Behind the Old Man” (Concord Monitor
1/1/99)
Shave and a haircut, two bits. Profilius
looks mighty fine on the coin’s state side:
shored up, spit-shined—in mint condition
you might say—for today’s unveiling.
But even gussied up, the quarter’s still
a common coin, clinking in the pockets
of poor and rich alike, a coin with which
to buy time for a load or two of laundry,
time in the parking meter’s monitor
of our comings and goings, time enough
to sip a take-out coffee, phone a friend.
Though time is—as they say—money,
it’s time we never get enough of and
no minted coin’s more valuable than that.
Still, this Old Man's granite visage—sculpted
from a rock-hard, rock-ribbed history,
tempered in the kilns of summer fire
and winter ice—is now, to coin a phrase,
coin of New Hampshire’s realm, and as such,
(in service to the general welfare) well spent here!
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