That Too Damn Early Blue

That Too Damn Early Blue

Because the sky is that too damn early blue
I can’t help but see them differently,
Those shoes, floating among the crossing wires,
Electrified effigy to the things kids do.

Somewhere, some kid is walking on the too damn hard,
Shorn of rubber soles that stutter stepped and up-faked,
Walking on the jagged sticky smoldering street
Barefoot; on feet made for a barer world.

And maybe that’s where they’re going, maybe this
Is what you do; toss your kicks in the high strung air
And don’t look back until the ground is too damn green
For anything but bare bodies, and the things kids do.

Or maybe this is the night work of urban fairies,
Citified sylvan tricksters bringing babies to Bowies,
Leaving only shoes dangling so their parents know:
Now your children on the wild air go.

Or maybe I should I Google it, but it’s too damn easy
(These days) to know the facts: I’d like to toss them up
To roast on crossing wires until they burn into some bare
Unknowable thing; like the truth about what kids do.
***

I wrote this poem on the train this morning as I left for my (earlier, later) work. I’ve been writing poetry frequently, but sharing it rarely, because I don’t have a clear sense of its value. Poetry is something I love without much critical judgment, as opposed to the lean and hungry eye I cast on plays. But I’d like to share more of it on the reasonable gamble that if something gives me pleasure, it might do the same for someone else; so there you have it, a poem about shoes.