Dress Code

[Wildcard]

Hi Geoff,

I'm reading along loving this poem and then I get to the last two stanzas and I can't figure out what is happening. I know it's probably just my inexperience in reading poetry, but until that point I'm getting a story about a child that gets stung on the eye at school interlaced with a subtext of uniforms not performing their intended purpose (a very washed down version of your much more elegant theme, sorry ) and then suddenly:

You shed
and returned them to their owners
when your eye opened,

and it stained
the only shirts
they ever wore to school
that year.

'Shed' - Takes off the uniform? Like breaking a yolk?
'returned them to their owners' - the school? the man?

and then the eye opens and stains the uniform?

The thing is, if it wasn't an intriguing and well-written poem I wouldn't care so much, which speaks of your considerable skill. I just don't get the last two stanzas of this one

Thanks for sharing.