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.

Three Older Poems

Three poems that have been around for a good while: the first two date back two or three decades; the last is a little younger. 

1. 

Dali-Magritte - poem written on the back of my will

 If you have ears…then listen.

There was a cat in the corner:
I know - I saw its tail twitch.

A mouse slid across the floor:

don't tell me it's only leaf shadows
flaying at windows.

Three dogs sit outside the café
drinking lattes -
I don't care if you can't see them.

A horse marches into the traffic:
why shouldn't drivers blare their horns?

Hermaphrodite elephants
impregnate each other,
struggling worms under the soil -
have you no ears?

If bottom-dwelling slugs
walked, or shrugged their shoulders,
men would cry out:
"Mountains fall on us!"
You walk as though the
moon never woke.

I know some person

dreams my dreams -
am I not in them?
will he wake?

2. 

We need poems when we...

see
a blind man point his white stick at a magazine stand,
an old lady walk against the lights while five cars grumble;

hear
the mention of worms in the ears of fish,
an empty building's bellow when a hammer drops four floors;

find
a week-dead fish in the refrigerator,
a hessian-skirted church tower,
a dead tree in a public square's brick planter;

understand
an icecream in the mind of a child,
sharp-cornered knee-height coffee tables,
two minds at one table unaware,
space between a pillar and a window where no child can squeeze;

discover
an untouched swinging lightbulb-cord,
toilets beneath the street down bleach-cleaned steps,
a boy concealed in clothes three sizes too big;

realise
literacy is for the spiritually-impaired.

learn our inability to walk in another man's shoes,
taste another man's wife's cooking,
wait for a blind date who doesn't show,
thrust too many oranges into a paper bag,
know the inability of the human hand to encompass a banana,
wear black clothes without a funeral,
find concrete block motels with orange plastic cups and tasselled bedspreads.

3. 

Lying still

Lying still,

winding down from making love,

I heard the room - for the first time - 

singing.

And realised it was not

cold, insensate,

knew it knew me

knew me naked,                                                                     

in intimacy:

in getting up and dressing,

ferreting in the dark for underpants,

slipping trousers on,

undressing, lying down,

swapping shoes for slippers,

lying buff in summer,

in winter pyjama-ed.

All walls have ears, eyes –

this room smells me, is tender towards

me, feels me in itself where

love is most hard to make

and simplest. 

Opening a morning window

it sings me to the world.