by John Whalen-Bridge
Suppose there was a shoe in the road,
Tan shoe for a lady, small,
And filled with water from the rain,
Avoided by pedestrians and drivers
In the crosswalk where it had slipped
From a backpack, or fallen off a foot?
Hard to imagine a lady bumping on,
Thinking, “Oh well, still got one shoe.”
I propped my bike on its side stand
And reached for the shoe, putting it
Atop a sign amid the island
Abutting the crosswalk. Shoe:
Now you will be seen. Today: gone.
Reclaimed? Dispatched to the bin?
Or maybe, once dry, burned, offered
To a one-footed ghost ancestor
Along with a tidy sum of hell money?
The list of things I’ll never know.
John Whalen-Bridge teaches American literature at the National University of Singapore. He writes about impermanence, bipolar phenomena, and things people might say.
