The poet doesn’t know shit.
He stands by the telephone
which will ring in one second the
dish will break at the
moment of regret and
this is boring but
there’s movement at the edges.
It’s a clean sunrise, birds are singing
the bread truck is full on its way to delivery.
Once he wore a shirt for five years.
Once a shirt melted in the dryer
but this shirt is yesterday’s shirt
not the one worn by an enemy
or the ugly one given to charity
and worn with a tie.
He gracefully puts on this shirt
with the smell of someone strange
when the shirt goes on or the shirt comes off.
–Peter Bushyeager
Poetry
The poem reminds me of some of Pablo Neruda’s odes to his articles of clothing.