a friend has beautiful feet

my understanding of why 
we wear different shirts is starting 
to wane. why do i have all these shirts 
that look different? am i supposed to continue
wearing different shirts throughout the course of my lingering life? 
and how to pick how often to wear the blue 
plaid button up, with short sleeves 
and the contrasting red? it’s really more of a red 
wine color, a reddish mahogany, a red darkened 
with the muttering of purple. i s’pose i like the way 
this shirt looks, the blue and the red 
that is also many things other than red. but how
do i determine when to wear it? and when do i decide
not to? 

i spoke at length with a man on my porch. we 
shared a meal and several hours 
of talk. he wore black jeans
that had been cut a bit short at the leg. he removed 
his socks and shoes and ate 
barefoot on the porch. sometimes he
crossed his legs with an ease that i admire. 
the black jeans with the cut slightly short legs,
those too i admire. to think to be barefoot 
on the porch of another, perhaps that too i admire. 
i wonder how he decided to choose 
what to wear? and why he cut the ends
of his pant legs? he spoke about the mind and its position
in the body. how it isn’t necessarily in the body. he said 
his mind is just as easily in that tree 
over there, he said, pointing to the tree at our right. 
a ranging alder, spindly and grasping for light. i looked
at the water, ocean water, 
several yards from our sitting porch. and asked
him if his mind would still meld with the tree were he to fall 
into the water and drown? would his body float
in the bay, would his mind float in the cambium? what is it
to see the world through bark, and what is it
to choose what shirt to wear?

it makes sense to find a shirt you like
and stick with it.
this statement requires one to have 
an abiding sense of sense. to feel 
that this world sometimes makes sense, 
and therefore what shirt you put on your body can 
also make sense. your body in a shirt 
of blue and maybe a version of red. your body 
in a pair of pants with the pant legs cut short. 
your mind in a tree, your body floating
in a cradling indifference of water.