Sonnet for Brown Suit

Don’t grow attached to a brown suit

pre-loved and prone to tear

stitch by stitch, your shared disrepair

contained between hat and boot.

Its gait and gestures are your own

though it moves like an automaton

through church, graveyard and garden.

Yawning, long having flown

in spirit with sparrow and swift

it feels for a speech or for keys

bunched at the elbows and knees.

It forgot the party, the gift.

The cut is becoming, becoming

your very edge, my mannequin

turned windyman, brown pin-

stripes for a skeleton. Opening

up, you lose it, and the brown

loosed balloon paints the town.