Vest

I put on again the vest of many pockets.

It is easy to forget

which holds the reading glasses,

which the small pen,

which the house keys,

the compass and whistle, the passport.

To forget at last for weeks

even the pocket holding the day

of digging a place for my sister’s ashes,

the one holding the day

where someone will soon enough put my own.

To misplace the pocket

of touching the walls at Auschwitz

would seem impossible.

It is not.

To misplace, for a decade,

the pocket of tears.

I rummage and rummage—

transfers

for Munich, for Melbourne,

to Oslo.

A receipt for a Singapore kopi.

A device holding music:

Bach, Garcia, Richter, Porter, Pärt.

A woman long dead now

gave me, when I told her I could not sing,

a kazoo.

Now in a pocket.

Somewhere, a pocket

holding a Steinway.

Somewhere, a pocket

holding a packet of salt.

Borgesian vest,

Oxford English Dictionary vest

with a magnifying glass

tucked inside one snapped-closed pocket,

Wikipedia vest, Rosetta vest,

Enigma vest of decoding,

how is it one person can carry

your weight for a lifetime,

one person

slip into your open arms for a lifetime?

Who was given the world,

and hunted for tissues, for chapstick.

—2018