This Wallet
This wallet is the last I will ever have.
I've got it penciled in like a line-up:
as the leather wears, so will I,
broken in like my baseball glove,
just as the final innings fade away.
I remember the wallet I lost at fifteen.
Like my dad's, of shiny black
calf's leather for a birthday,
but Dad's was old, buffed by wear
stretched and rounded by mysterious bulk.
Mine so light, was it in my pants or not?
It fell at a Fox matinee
from the pocket of my navy-style
white bellbottoms as I watched
The Happening, with that Supremes hit song.
I don't know what else was in that wallet,
but I recall a picture of a girl,
tucked away in dark folds, sex-redolent
in warm calfskin.
I see a face, hear a name, and feel
a weekend afternoon, the tree we climbed,
the fort we dug in black suburban soil
but cannot reach that place in time held deep
in slots and sections of my mind.
The girl and I, the matinee Supremes,
their song, the tree fort afternoon
my father, ball glove, and this wallet,
all will fall into creases and crevasses,
recesses and wrinkles of red-gray time,
the convolutions of my dying brain,
and this last, not-yet-lost wallet
will live on in someone else's pocket,
being as it is already dead.