night
awake from a dream,
I squint at three dispassionate numbers,
stare them down like it’s high noon
(but it’s 3:45).
then I sigh and flutter closed,
sink down, burrow deep,
but it’s too late:
behind my eyes
the dream is a poem now, scarcely even born,
yet she wants me to
come get up,
come play,
come feed me
now!
she’s yanked the covers back,
knotted them at my knees
so I’m twisted and pinned.
and I realize
she’s been dancing on
the mountain of my hip,
because it’s creaking under the weight of her insistent jig.
and i feel heavy there with stiff fatigue,
yet still i rise,
resigned, to deal with her.
shoes
every evening
my father came home,
groaned into his chair,
and asked me,
his eldest,
his daughter,
to pull off his boots.
I knelt,
grasped the heel,
pulled against him, wiggled, tugged,
until I’d fall back, giggling,
my hands gripping warm empty leather,
softened by a million unspecified footsteps.
the peek of pasty leg encased in dark sock
would make me laugh, embarrassed.
and at just the right time
he’d bring out the cedar-wood box with the angled top,
stocked with brushes, bottles, tins,
and cloths, clean and soft, yet dark-mottled,
and he’d polish each shoe,
show me how careful murky whorls
would disappear into scattered flecks of soot
until only gleaming black remained.
later:
the boots became wing tips,
but by that time we had put away these childhood games
for a more grown-up version of tug of war,
and he had become too busy for the cedar-wood box
and the sacrament of the shoes.
7 Responses to “two poems: night and shoes”
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» IT’S SNOWING! Oh wait, it stopped.
» “If you like art, and you try it, you can’t stop doing it.” –little she-who-is
» Hanukkah begins this Sunday. Enjoy the best comedy piece on the Festival of Lights since Adam Sandler’s Hanukkah song.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
this posting reminds me of the wonderful paintings van gogh did of shoes and boots. these paintings seem like portraits, in a way, don’t they?
and i love your ” sacrament of the shoes.”
blessings, anne
You’ve done more to make me appreciate poetry than all those years of English classes! Thanks!
I love them both. You paint wonderful word pictures.
Great poems, as always.
He sure did become too busy for that cedar box, but was never too busy to pay me five dollars to polish those shoes with the polishes in that very cedar box.
I love the “sacrament of the shoes.” Beautiful.
Question for you: What advice would you give someone who’s never written poetry but thinks she might like to give it a try, even if she doesn’t have a clue where to start?
advice to friday mom, start anyway.
oh oh oh oh oh
I second what Spoooky Rach said, and I used to teach English Lit!!!
the ending to shoes is sad