Jeffrey's Shirt

In the church cellar
sale of sneaker discards and often-washed rompers,
late-show slicer-gadgets, the kind which sliced
potatoes and thumbs,
all marked down to one coin over zero,
my young friend Jeffrey
poked and picked at the Maine experience;
passed the potato mashers and peelers,
until he held up a cotton treasure,
a shirt not five times laundered,
but, alas! pressed against his chest, too small.
Behind came a silken voice from a body's frame
which blocked out all the window light:
"That there was a his 'n' her set,
and you got the her in your hand, right there.
Try the mate and it'll likely fit.
Just lookin' at you, I know it will.

And so it did.
Each loving stitch crafted in the stretched-out light
of winter-lamps. So I want to think. The point is this:
Jeffrey, long and gaunt and sinewy,
muscled in all his lanky eighteen years,
looked behind to see the one-time model of his shirt,
beheld a matching his to the avoirdupoised her,
true lovers still, through thin and thick --
but then, it was a long, long winter, and the potato
barrel bottoms never showed.

Do we leave our youth
in rummage sales?
or do we pass along our lived-out beauty, woven wisps
of dreams, waiting to come to life for twenty-five cents,
by the likes of Jeffrey searching,
searching for something of value?

Like Persephone of old, we have two homes--not that our suburban place is a Stygian fen. It is in the "top-ten" among communities, if one can trust those socio-economic surveys. On a walk to the library, I counted three Rolls Royces. Anyone without vanity plates is outside the norm. Money buys not only cars, good schools, a top-of-the-line library system, burglar alarms, police and garbage collection--it also buys privacy and independence. We are not used to calling on our neighbors for a needed screw or a helpful look-see for the ailing lawn mower when the carpenter and the gardener are at one's beck and call.