Al’s Long Arms
A shirt off the rack was too short.
Western snaps on the cuffs failed to meet
above his wrists and, for a while, he rolled
them back a few folds, exposing
thick forearms with their shrapnel-strike scars
where shell fragments skated his skin.
Wheat-colored and gold, this shirt
of pearl-inlaid snaps on flap pockets
occupied a hanger with its weight
(not much, as he’d ripped out the sleeves
that first summer), for three months after
Al’s death. Frayed edges around the armholes,
metallic gold threads too stubborn to let go,
tickled my shoulder whenever I entered
our walk-in.
I’m far from there in place and years. Yet,
around five a.m. when October’s sky is pricked
with starlight, the moon a cold shade of butter
and settling into the northwest horizon,
his shirt appears, trails frayed remains
across my bare back, tricks me from sleep.
Sheets wafted by a night’s stirring,
the shirt’s not materially here.
Such long arms, mumbled when waking
and remembered when walking estuarian shores,
shoes sucked inside receding tide’s
hungry mud and marsh. Another widow might
understand, not all holes heal.
[After Jorge Evans 'Overtime' as read in Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry]
Every word of this penetrates my breast. This verse especially:
I’m far from there in place and years. Yet,
around five a.m. when October’s sky is pricked
with starlight, the moon a cold shade of butter
and settling into the northwest horizon,
his shirt appears, trails frayed remains
across my bare back, tricks me from sleep.
I wondered if you’d see this, my friend. thanks for stopping to read.