Cheap Shoes

Cheap Shoes

Before it was a blizzard

there was rain and wind and darkness

but we had word beams to bend

boxes full, a sundrenched attic’s worth, 
enough and more

for any shape we wanted

so I opened the back door

to let the animals in before the storm.

The mares came first fluttering their buttery eyes,

whom the bitter goats tried to hound thru the wildering night

and the geese were lost as sheep, as the braying mule

when the howling finally came to eat the world.

Then we knew it wasn't safe in the filigreed cage.

We let everything fly heartbird from hand 

so that back before it was wind and rain and darkness

and up the stairs of the sunbright grove

bumped the pit wagon---remember? it took

so many---we could still

choose not to board,

and bend and bend instead

these beams of words

to make the half moon

spill over with lovers' night
deep in the snow.

So I wonder if it's true, what I've heard them say,

that death's unbendable in his cheap shoes
and walks the longest way.

January 2012

Posted for   OpenLinkNight   at dVerse Poets Pub 

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