My father brought a blue wool sweater
Back from war, and put it in a drawer,
And never took it out. He wouldn’t hear of washing it,
And that just served to tip me off
To complications, as I suppose there always are.
The magnum of champagne, the mighty splurge
Of Piper-Heidsieck, marked forty-five
Years of marriage beyond the war.
He kept the drwer empty, and I later found it cleaning out the house.
(My mother must have found a way to empty out that drawer.)
I keep the bottle around somewhere
Down among the basement tangles,
Move it around from time to time,
It’s going on thirty-six years or so, I suppose.
