Poet Dress

//poet dress

PREPPING FOR A POETRY READING

You should look like a poet,
wherever you go,
I read somewhere
in a book of
advice to poets.
Do poets dress
in black velvet berets
and flowing white silk blouses,
lady poets
décolleté?
Or any old way?
Looking for poetic clothes,
I check out a store or two,
halfheartedly try on
a few uninspiring dresses,
decide that
what I already have
will have to do.
But there's always one last store.
I see a dress,
my blue,
between desert twilight
and Druid,
my length,
like a waterfall, so tips of
narrow feet peep
shyly out like
tiny rose-quartz pebbles,
my material,
sun-drenched flax
woven soft
as a spider web
into finest linen.
The cost, modest.
I float it on,
a parachute nestling
round my poetic body.
Three siren salesladies exclaim,
"It's you!"

It's true.
Is that poet
in the mirror
ME?