Goodwill

I don’t know where they went,
his thin polyester pants, the ones he wore
to work and home, at the table,
leaning over his crosswords, cigarette smoke
filling his mouth—

or his sweaters, even the ones
we bought him days before he died,
when he’d wasted into knobs and angles,
unable to sit up,
drooling even—

or his shoes, his shirts, his shorts—
where did they go?
a dresser full of fifty years—
the things we knew him by
his whole life,

which, in the end, was just
a uniform—
emptied out