WARDROBE

Last night, a wardrobe: ornate,

deep, and filled with every outfit

you wore forty years or more

ago: and though I back then

couldn't tell one from the other,

the feel of each was unique

between my fingers -

one, thin, green, so fine I felt

the light coming through the material

that long, new summer...

When I came back to myself

that hand was clenched like the dark.

All day I've carried the white

of your first jacket, suffered it

like a glimpse, a thrust.