White Shirts

Are impossible to keep white. I've been thinking about it, and looking up solutions for keeping them white and so will post a couple of links here. Not very poetic, that may come later.

Googling "white shirt" and "poem" came up with some interesting things. Poems with that title, a whole book with that as title (by Laurie MacFayden), and lots of self-published verse.

By far the most moving, beautiful, startling, confusing, and fine is the poem, by June Jordan, called "It's Hard to Keep a Clean Shirt Clean" published on line at The Poetry Foundation, the beginning of which is this:

It’s a sunlit morning

with jasmine blooming

easily

and a drove of robin redbreasts

diving into the ivy covering

a backyard fence

what used to be

or doves shoving aside

the birch tree leaves

when

a young man walks among

the flowers

to my doorway

where he knocks

then stands still

brilliant in a clean white shirt

He lifts a soft fist

to that door

and knocks again

He’s come to say this

was or that

was

not

and what’s

anyone of us to do

about what’s done

what’s past

but prickling salt to sting

our eyes

What’s anyone of us to do

about what’s done

I tried to find a photo of a man in a white shirt, that represented the solemnity and joy of this poem, the grief and softness, but no luck. Too much pornography on the internet, women dressed in men's miliatry whites, nurses popping out of their hooker dresses.

I was resolved to find something beautiful, and switched the search to paintings. Lucky me, I found this astonishing self-portrait, appropriately titled "Man in a White Shirt" by Lucian Freud. White, gold, black, soft and harsh together. Like my hands after a day of trying to get those perspiration stains out of my own laundry.