Lament for a Sweater

A pocket knife, a set of keys …

these are things I could believe

I would misplace — I would not grieve

a set of keys; I would replace them.

But a sweater, shrunken at the sleeves, and bleached

at the collar, with a zipper so precocious

I could not coax the thing to feed — and I tried! —

should not have gone the way it did; it should have died

in the great life cycle in which all great sweaters die,

torn and sewn a thousand times.

My once black sweater, patched and grey …

I left it on the trunk of the car that drove away.