Two poems

Shirts

“They’re such beautiful shirts,” she sobbed.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

At three score years and ten I think
increasingly about my shirts—
which ones are fraying at the collar
and which, perhaps, could be reversed?

My wilful Malley’s washed too well;
too much tugging at the sleeve.
Some shirts I haven’t cared for greatly;
the fate of others makes me grieve.

I’ve never really bought a shirt
that might have made Scott’s Daisy weep.
Substantial? Yes. But showy? No.
The Protestant in me runs deep.

It saddens me, the way they wear;
first the collar, then the cuff.
I never like to throw them out
until I’m sure they’ve done enough.

One or two, those old Pelacos,
live on as photos, black-and-white,
pinched a little at the shoulders;
their collars just a size too tight.

I have one still, a souvenir,
a drip-dry bought in ’63,
the year I first went teaching. It’s
a triumph over entropy.

A few, of course, retrieve too sweetly
certain decades of one’s life—
the seventies with body shirt,
a present from one’s second wife.

My shirts are not unhappy surely
on their triangles of wire,
awaiting those who’ll don or dump them
after I’ve been through the fire.

Years ago, I bought them new;
one for each day of the week;
washed and ironed them, hoping that
they’d do their best for my physique.

These days though it’s mainly op-shops.
Their wares, one feels, retain the sweat
(to some degree) of all who’ve worn them—
and aren’t too much forgotten yet.

Shirts, then, are about endurance.
I walk at ten and nap at three.
Which of them will I outlive?
And which of them will outlive me?

The Hindenburg

Stalled there at a thousand feet,
they saw no shadow of their doom—
nudged a little by the wind
and peering from a drawing room.