Underwear by Dale Mawhinney

I’ve been lying there
Watching your underwear
Seeing it settle and rest
It’s not on your skin
And your skins long gone
Inside it is an abstraction
This underwear that once
Graced your skin so fairly
Once it was an obstruction
To be gratuitously removed
Now sitting there resting
It is a metaphor that draws me
Into watching your underwear
The distraction is gone
And your factions remain
Taking their residence
And reminding me of your
Ideological constraints that
Inhabit your underwear
Lying there watching your
Watching your underwear
Curves and waves of cloth
Small cloth blurring into
The lines of hidden language
Secret and furtive messages
Delivered in the warp and weft
Of fallen discarded weaves
Deciphering requires a Rosetta
Or it’s stone equivalent
To give shape and form to the
Contextual meaning of your missing skin
That usually fills this cloth
I am lying here watching
Watching your underwear