"Seersucker Suit," Deborah Digges

To the curator of the museum, to the exhibition of fathers,
to the next room from this closet of trousers
and trousers, full sail the walnut hangers of shirts,
O the great ghost ships of his shoes.
Through the racks and the riggings,
belt buckles ringing and coins in coat pockets
and moths that fly up from the black woolen remnants,
his smell like a kiss blown through hallways of cedar,
the shape of him locked in his burial clothers,
his voice tucked deep in his name,
his keys and the bells to his heart,
I am passing his light blue seersucker suit
with one grass-stained knee,
and a white shirt, clean boxers, clean socks, a handkerchief.

From Trapeze, the title poem of which appeared in The Atlantic Monthly (January 2002).

Hear Digges' poems "Enjoy the Wind Catcher" and "Aubade for the Executioner" in RealAudio, thanks to The Cortland Review. Ploughshares published her poem "The Afterlife." A fragment from her 1986 poem "Ancestral Lights" made it into The Columbia World of Quotations, as did the last two lines of "The Man In the Circle."