20 Year Old Honeymoon White Pants

I don't remember when I decided to work in my white, honeymoon pants
but it was summer, hot; and the thought of wearing a white shirt with white pants
seemed suitable for landscaping, but today, my pants tore on the job,
and throughout the day ripped down from my thigh like a leg-wound opening
to below my knee.
So I wear them with that one leg rolled up, the slit in the open thigh parting each time I kneel, causing me to remember that I had owned them for 20 years.
Last week, we would have been married two decades, the last ten years of which we lived apart, divorced. Last week's forgotten anniversary was remembered today, when the pants tore, when I remembered where they had come from.

As I kneel and rise I make the tear worse throughout the day.
And as I do, the loss that my ex-wife and I still share lingers.
She and I speak frequently but haven't yet spoken of that forgotten anniversary, and nor did she remind me of it at the time, she, who never forgets.

My mind negotiates its way to our 17 - nearly 18 - year old son who is
mourning a love withdrawn by a woman in his own life.

I take the scissors to my honeymoon pants and cut shorts out of them.

Tomorrow I will wear them while digging post-holes by hand,
and my knees will remember white linen lost to circumstance
while my bare thighs glisten in the humidex,
soil becoming dirt in the cool earth touched
as I lie with my ear to the garden bed.

My down-stretched hand scoops the ground within,
and I pull up clenched sand,
surrogate beaches walked newly wed twenty years ago
while pelicans flew sentinental over jetties
as we dreamed.