Shoe Dreams

After a short illness keeping me off Soup, and a 50-year refrain from Prose Poetry, I was inspired by a Thomas Merton talk about Rilke to find the courage for this form again. Shoe Dreams Is there any wonder some of us desire shoes as dreams of possibilities for all the outings to events in any character we might choose to wear now a hiker in boots through forest or snow or later to accent a ballgrown for dancing on beaches where only a variety of sandals will do. My racks with their long squished rows of footwear once held quite a volume of tall wedges and high heels in neutral colors as years passed they now smile up in the fluffs and colors splendidly presenting an any mood’s choice of house and bed slippers for feet so sore or cold or simply wishing to dazzle the night the prince might come knocking with a single glass slipper in hand seeking my foot for a fit all the while not knowing I’ve many singles from lost pairings so separated in near-midnight sprints to catch coaches before their transformation to sleep. I have never admired the appearance of feet once grown beyond babies’ kissable toes long before the mature feet are humbly bumped over calloused worn these appendages truly the thoughtful engineering prize of God’s design and oh dear Lord who am I to criticize the way they bring long leg lines to a short plodding stop unlike the more the graceful angles of hooves or the soft bend of paws or the pointing birds’ claws rounding branches over blue waters where ducks swim with their webbed paddle feet not too unlike my own on land becoming candidates for a notable invention of rainbow slippers. There is no wonder I am transfixed and transported by ballerinas en pointe carrying the geometry of their lines to infinity through the arrowing tips of fingers and their precisely placed tapering legs to toes and even the slanting of their long necked heads setting the beauty of the motion of fluid angles with lines like a pas de deux of life and time in a vision of music in a kinescope without its finite haltings. In strongly laced arches adorned gleaming clasps golden and etched with tiny doves I still stand dreaming I might find that long-forgotten warehouse in which a far corner catches the farthest ray of the sun harboring the pairs with wings to fit heels brought through centuries by heaven’s rain...But even had I them I think it matters little to God how my feet are adorned yes the importance is always and only the path I choose to venture forth on for the course of my days. **********. **********. ************. ********* (C) sally Young eslinger 11/18/2020 Thanks be to God