My first concept of river.
It wasn't a place to stroll, 
though couples parked 
on its flats after dark, the stench
just another taboo ignored.
Each time we crossed Sousa Bridge
I saw that brown effluvia 
laying down a border
between the government 
and the neighborhood
I lived in, though we were,
in fact, one city. 
I was never tempted to sail 
those waters. That I could swim
in a river was a notion
that never entered my head.
~~                        

At a table in a Jersey restaurant
where we celebrate the upcoming wedding,
the divorce attorney pulls from her purse
a new one-hundred-dollar bill and holds it
to the light on the wall behind her.
There's something gossipy and familial
about her explanation of how to know
a counterfeit, as if she's revealing
the secret of telling the twins apart.

Echoing his portrait, Franklin's shadow
is easily visible when light
shines through the paper, and yes,
the vertical line as well. What
do the other patrons think of this
revelation, the attorney still twisted
in her chair to hold the bill up
as her voice now assumes a courtroom
tone? What do I think, a woman
of small denominations, not sure
I've ever held a hundred-dollar bill?

The attorney's business is making
great matter out of small distinctions,
tallying deceptions and disputed money
that press a wedge between vows,
but tonight she shares this knowledge
gratis, showing the difficult bond
of our currency, its fine markings
that must be so lovingly copied
to a product the innocent will trust.
It may be the wine that makes the whole
enterprise, legal and illegal, 
begin to resemble a courtly 
waltz. How we depend on each other,
counterfeiters so artful they support
those whose living it is to make
their task impossible.