Here is hung
an old undershirt.
I knew it well, or it knew me well.
It was not a bulletproof vest
nor a shirt of chainmail,
yet in its way it was designed to protect me;
it swaddled my heart,
it soaked my sweat.
Here is folded
a tattered undershirt.
I come not to praise it
but to recycle it -
a work rag it shall become,
that it may continue a textile utility
until the soiled and stained saturation,
the bitter dirty end.
Here lies
a torn and faded undershirt,
washed to threadbare,
shrunk to almost sleeveless.
I shed it, freed from it, and
I miss it not, nor covet another,
for in the end, clothes are only trappings,
and what I want is liberation.
The shirt off my back,
all garments rent, ripped, or ragged,
the raiment I don today
is naught but the rain-bringing breeze
and the sunbaked soil.
and the sunbaked soil.
Let the elements swathe me:
I give gladly of my nudity
back to nature.
