Summers in black

Who’s idea was it? I think his, as I’d started
wearing everything from Oxfam. Among my finds

collarless shirts. There was I
and my clique, ourselves fearfully

fresh, seeking out lived-in things, clothing
with more history than us.

This although a year or two back
we’d so hated hand-me-downs.

So he started offering me his old clothes first,
trying to help his son – to understand.

And as my favourite colour became the colour
he wore for work, he gave me his old shirts,

all black of course, washed-out and worn-in,
collarless, just a circular band around the neck,

with a slit either side at the front
where the stiff white strip slipped in.

Obviously I wouldn’t be wearing that bit,
ever. But the shirts I lived in

all summer, loose, but still black,
a couple of buttons open, neck free,

something most Jesus and Mary Chain fans
didn’t have – something he could do.

Steph Morris’ poems appear in his chapbook Please don’t trample us; we are trying to grow!, in the anthologies Joy//Us, Poetry Prescription: Becoming, Up//Roar, and in various magazines and gardens.