IF YOU DON’T DRESS PROPERLY YOU’RE GOING TO BE OSTRACIZED

 

When I brought my jacket

Into the dry cleaners to be sewn,

the Chinese lady who runs the place

said, You should throw it away.

There’s nothing I can do to make it better.

She looked at my jacket, and she talked

like a doctor, or rather, like a funeral director,

and I thought she was going to offer

euthanasia for this thing I felt so close to.

It was like when my dog got old,

and they said the same thing, made the same suggestions.

I took him home,

and when he finally died, two years later,

I buried him in the back yard.

Same story all the time. As soon

as you get close to something

they want to take it away, want you

to conform, like wear a tie,

clean shirts, a continual smile.

Truthfully I prefer to wear old sweats,

particularly when I play tennis, but now,

even my wife goes along with that folderol,

suggests that if I don’t wear more formal clothes,

no one will talk to us. Probably true,

but I took this home too; I mean

my old jacket, and I sewed it myself.

Let’s see if it holds together in the wash.

 

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