Broken Things

Selected Shorts Subject

The cold season in Wisconsin sets in once more,
and still I wear my tattered gray short pants
around

the house and surround where my home office is,
though I know sartorially no great credit to me these bare threads
redound.

The hems dangle down. You say time has made my abbreviated trousers
unpresentable; yes, by some standards I am poorly
gowned.

Just this very day a squad car passed while I in my shorts
raked leaves into a mound. The cops spied my special drawers and
frowned.

But I don't seem to give a darn or a big rodent's posterior anymore,
if ever I did, how my own unpublicized posterior is clad. Perhaps I shed or add
a pound

now and then, but my shredded fading sheath is a forgiving shroud;
the waist is elastic, a yet strongly expanding and contracting heart. So
hound

me if you will, washing after ragging washing, I just cling to
these pants the more, and they to me; I know how couthless that may
sound.

There may be a Lack of Fashion Statement in such die-hard loin clothing
but I don't intend to make it:

I too am fraying, but my pants and I, together, will hold our dear
ground.