Shoes & Death
Michael Hart

Women’s shoes aren’t meant to last.
Unlike women
They expire easily,
and they demand the highest possible view of things
at every moment;
whereas we, we are eternally
rolling our bodies in the mundane.
Hands in dishwater,
bellies in birth,
heads in the luscious lake of the senses.

Try to roll in a pair of spike heels.
and you’ll quickly find yourself back down
on the ground, in the fecund muck of
the ordinary,
the perspective that allows both high and low.

I have long since outgrown those spiky towers, only a few lingering
in the shadows of my wardrobe, to remind me
of the passing of time.
Now even flat shoes remind me of that same thing,
and I have graduated to
cushioned
laced up
sturdy
shoes.

I know the time is coming
when I will return to
no shoes at all,
just as I began,
indistinguishable, boy or girl,
won’t matter then.

As the mundane matters slip slowly
silently
steadily
into the hands of those who just yesterday
wore no shoes,
and dirtied my dishes,
and demanded my body as a land they owned,
I do not know the answer,
the way to joy,
is neither here nor there,
neither in shoes nor the daily doings
of my woman’s world,
but somewhere between
the shoe and the foot that fits it.

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