the patio chairs
have lost their shirts in the rain
autumn thunderstorm
Here the effect is overtly comical—in part because the anthropomorphism in entirely unambiguous. The poet invites us to see the chairs as girls or women whose clothing has come off in the rainy winds of an autumn storm.
In the language of the second line, I hear a faint echo to the expression “lost their shirts,” which is used to describe a complete financial loss. And so, there is a mild pathos to the image as well. And there is that wonderfully sonorous seasonal expression “autumn thunderstorm,” which gives the whole thing the feeling of a bacchanal—a wild, drunken party presided over by some god.
—Clark Strand