The shoe

The end of year busyness caught up on this blog, and it's been semi-abandoned for the last few months.  The busyness meant that poems in the pipeline had to wait to be reviewed and redrafted and so on.  Here's one that's finally made it through the system...

The shoe

Finally -

the shoe that has lain for a 

year on the footpath, has gone,

the shoe that months ago was the

focus of an inquisition of the

boy who had carelessly

left it lying on the asphalt.

The shoe that

caused lying:

I don’t know where it’s

gone!  I didn’t lose it,

it just...vanished.

The shoe that brought

angst to the pocket of the

mother, and angst to the

ear clipped by the father.

The shoe that may or

may not have been

flung over a telephone wire,

that may or may not have

dropped out of a backpack.

The single shoe that was

late for its appointment

with its sole mate, that was

last reported Missing in Action.

The shoe that untimely

caused its mate to pass its

use-by-date.

The shoe that while

lying became an

artefact, progressively

hidden beneath the

local trees’ detritus. 

The shoe that lay

believing it was part of the

homeless community,

sleeping out at nights, its

laces trailing beneath its

bedclothes of last week’s

blossoms and some tree’s

seedlings.

The shoe that was

available to the

first one-footed

person of smaller stature

who happened to hop along.

The shoe that was

left behind for any

person who owned a

bereft and mateless single

shoe that was the equivalent

left, or right.