Red Plaid Shirt
March 18 2015


I am an impostor
in my red plaid shirt,
rolling-up my sleeves
getting down to work.

Its slap-cheeked blush
picks up my complexion
like the brisk outdoors.
There's the supple drape
of flannel cotton

softly worn,

the manly restraint
of its button-up front
undone one more.

Bright red plaid
is what a man of integrity wears,
and the impractical fashionable seeker-of-status
would shun.

My favourite shirt
is now thinning, faded,
buttons missing
cuffs frayed. 
But I am not one
for newness, change,
conventional expectations
fashion's fickle dictates.

It was a gift
from a long-lost love
when we both were young.
And now that we're older
and out of touch
and not much interested
in acquisition,
it reminds me of faithfulness, service
fresh beginnings.

Of a hypothetical us,
who might have grown old together
and worn each other
like softly worn plaid.
The unspoken comfort
of an older couple
ageing gracefully, and well.
Who have no need

to impress anyone else.

As little attention as I pay to clothes (and believe me, no one pays less!), I find I'm almost always dressing in blues and greens. But the last 2 days I ended up grabbing first my ancient red rugby jersey (and immediately heard my mother's voice asking how in the world I could possibly go out in public with all those tears and holes), and then my old plaid shirt. And realized how flattering a nice shade of red can be. 

I really love red plaid, and love that shirt. Which is why it came to mind as the perfect subject for a simple poem. (I say "simple" because all my poems start out as Haiku, even though they inevitably end up -- to my ear, anyway -- containing far too many words.) It was only 3/4 through the first draft that I recalled the shirt's provenance: that it started out decades ago as a gift from her. So the poem took a totally unintended turn.

I suspect my impression of old love is idealized. But doesn't every young person falling in love talk about growing old together? And there is something about the comfort and attachment, the acceptance and ease of "old" love that can make it seem even more desirable than the intoxication and excitement of infatuation. So when I thought of growing old together, what could be more natural than calling back to that shirt: soft, worn comfortable; unpretentious, yet flattering? For me, the key line is worn each other. In the spirit of Haiku, everything this paragraphs says is contained in those 3 words.

Talking about worn each other brings up the choice I made in the subsequent line: ...softly worn plaid. I'm never keen on repeating a word; especially in consecutive lines. And I could very well have gone with soft cottony plaid, or some variation. But I really like the call-back to the 2nd stanza, word-for-word. And to my ears, "cottony" sounded too much like a laundry commercial's "cottony soft" (or is that toilet paper?!!) And aside from that, I like the slight tension in two shades of meaning in the same word: first the verb; then the adjective.

You may have noticed how I couldn't resist shoehorning into the poem my disdain for fashion (which I do, every chance I get!) Everything I despise about being fashionable is there -- if not explicitly, then at least implied: change for the sake of change; pointless (and wasteful) obsolescence; desperate status-seeking; mindless conformity; surface over depth, and appearance over comfort. My red plaid shirt is the antithesis of fickle fashion. Like a string of pearls worn with the simple black dress, it represents the classic good taste of something that’s always in fashion.