I’m afraid half my shirts are frayed.
Yet I can’t throw them out.
Even the torn one stays. You never know
when you might need to do a messy job:
unstop a drain or grout the bathroom floor.
Other shirts are almost new.
They’re for the days
I’ll have to give a lecture or
sit for a TV interview.
(There’ve been none recently that I recall.)
Mostly I’m here alone. I write.
I wouldn’t have to wear a shirt at all.
And yet it sets a tone –
but what’s the tone I want today? I might
decide a shirt of bold design
wouldn’t be bad
so that perhaps (if you dropped in)
you’d like the plaid and never see
the loosening threads, the early signs
of imminent decay that would remind
you just how surreptitiously
all our wraps can fall away.