Feeling like my clothes are sodden all the time
Like I just walked out of a lake
I keep my head down
Someone might be looking at me, at my clothes

The ragman still came down our street when I was five
His cart was pulled by a mule
He banged the side of the old cart and yelled Rags!
In a funny way.  In a funny voice.  I was five, as I mentioned earlier.

The mothers would come out with bundles, old clothes mostly,
They were paid cash.  It couldn’t have been much, could it?
The ragman didn’t weigh the bundles, he just looked at the cloth
And dipped pennies out of a leather pouch.

That was sixty years ago
A lot of my clothes are old, fraying, stained
As you can imagine
But there is no cart, no mule, no sack of pennies
The mothers who would scrimp and save are also gone

Anyhow, is it normal to look askance at your clothes,
Even while you are wearing them, and wonder
What will become of them, eventually,
How many hands they will pass through before they are
Remade or finally relinquished to the Ragman?