Mercury Dime in Salt Cellar

Winged Mystery
for my father

Not long before you passed over,
I telephoned. I’d been posting
an airmail letter and received, in change,
a Mercury dime—silver, incredible.

Minted before the time
you gained your paper route,
this coin had slipped out of its era
into our age of base metal.

Father, passionate numismatist,
we used to use your flip-up loupe
to examine mint marks
on Standing Liberty, count

kernals of grain on wheat pennies,
marvel at the engraver’s banner
over the dollar bill’s Divine Eye:
ANNUIT COEPTIS.
 
I profited by your sight and insight.
Can it be chance that this disk
of Mercury, guider of souls,
came into my hand with his winged helmet

just before your departure,
before it again disappeared, and you stole
away, quicker than the silvery moon
slips through a slot in the clouds,

or a coin drops through a dark crack
in the floorboards? No obol under
your tongue, you were tendered to flame.
Now your name is new-minted in song.

Leslie Schultz

My father’s love of coin collecting was ignited when he had a paper route in the 1940s. He introduced me to the legend of the Mercury dime (a coin which I saw in his collection but never found still in circulation). About this time two years ago, I wrote another poem based on my dad’s interest in coins, titled “The Value of Pennies.”

In the course of writing this poem, which was based on a true incident from the fall of 2003, I learned that the coin (1916 to 1945) does not (as its common name asserts) depict a Mercury but rather Young Liberty, a goddess. Further, it is believed that the model for it was Elsie Stevens, wife of the great American poet. Wallace Stevens. More to ponder…

Thank you for your company this month–just one more day and poem to go!

May you find a lucky penny today–Leslie

Squirrel with Mercury Dimes, Roosevelt Dime, and Liberty Head Dollar

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