No Foreign Coins in Tokyo This Year?

Covid’s rat maze of travel restrictions
One wall disappears  
While another gate elsewhere clangs shut
Jump this hurdle
Go through these hoops

All the while I look down
The places in Harajuku station 
Where I once noticed discarded tickets 
And one yen aluminum coins
Are bare⸺like dusty western ghost towns

At the Isetan Department Store Crossing in Shinjuku
No one screams Mandarin into phones over traffic noise
There’s practically no one there at all
The few that are out are without clutches of rustling shopping bags
Taxis stay empty 
No one fumbles and drops coins getting out

In Shinagawa station
Announcements in Korean, Chinese, English and Japanese
Haunt the three-quarter empty passageways that are usually full
Bullet train ticket machines stand ignored
No suitcases, no travellers, no foreign coins
No sound of any tourists except the reverberating announcements
For trips long planned, then postponed, then forgotten

All the people come to mind
And all the places 
All the experiences 
Covid has robbed us

My mind wanders 
A found Deutsche Mark cupronickel coin brought back West Berlin to me
A seen Hong Kong twenty-cent brass Ruffle reminded me of ferry crossings
A retrieved copper Tuppence flashed me back to a Woolworth’s in Harrogate
A scraped up Lincoln penny abandoned unheard, unseen, ignored 
It is my token to its siblings on Seattle street corners and in public fountains

When the need hits, to say “yes I did once travel”, I have proof
I shake my little box of found coins until it rattles
Inside I see the litter of reclaimed metal
Like a mother recognizing each in her stray brood
I smile 

Because yes, I see again and remember what it’s like to travel.