On the Eve of 75

I wonder what it’s like to be old and then remember it is like this,
my jeans have a hole at the knee that promises to spread, the hole
is mysterious, a stigmata showing up overnight, tiny
but unraveling, the edges stretch with every step

I consider buying new jeans, intact and smooth but
it seems a repudiation of the jeans I have because of the one tiny hole, the flaw marching me to the perfection counter, and that seems wrong
disloyal, these are my jeans after all, the hole is mine, its blank space my air

My mother would fix my jeans, iron on a patch of fake denim and tell me to go outside and play
Be careful, she’d say, after she stood the iron on its side, those are your only jeans
Hitch them up with your beaded belt from out west, the one your brother bought you
with the three dollars he earned cutting the grass and remember to take care of what you have

__________________

Photo by Siegfried Poepperl on Unsplash