Shoes
A Poem
I can’t think, off the top of my head, just
how many fairy tales are about shoes.
Shoes worn to pieces, shoes that dance by themselves until the person dies,
is it because they were burning or made of fire or just because of exhaustion, I forget, I forget, …
I remember the one about the glass slipper, or golden slipper, on the stairs.
I remember the one about the princesses who danced all night and lied about it all day.
I remember the one about people living in a shoe but let’s be honest, that’s more nursery rhyme isn’t it? There’s a difference, I think.
The point is, shoes are important and they are a vehicle for all sorts of messages
about life and death and love and morality and symbolism
so tell me what it means when the shoe fits
or doesn’t
tell me what it means when parts have to be cut off
and blood drips from a shoe —
tattle-tale of the wrong one, the wrong girl,
more fraud than trickster we can’t always mix our metaphors on this;
tell me what it means to be sensible and worthy
to have shoes that bring you back home with three clicks —
an American fairy tale,I know, I know, tell me what it means
to follow the path through the woods,
leaving a trail or covering tracks,
tell me what it means
to walk down the stairs and
keep the shoes on this time
or to go barefoot —
done with it all, uncivilized perhaps, or post-civilized by now;
we have seen what footwear can do
to women, men, marriages, love —
we…
