ON WOMEN AND SHOES

Puss N Boots from Shrek

I know about women and shoes,

but I seem to be missing that gene,

so any poem written by me

on that topic

has to be about not-shoes.

What I wear on my feet:

Crocs, for slipping on easily

to run in and out,

calf-high mud-boots

for heading to the barn

in rainy weather,

a battered pair of running shoes

with clunky laces, that have to be

wide enough for comfort

- rather like a flat-bottomed boat -

which I replace every few years,

give or take, when the soles wear out.

I have a daughter who wears

a fascinating array of footwear,

including combat boots for Kicking Ass,

cool strappy things for dressing up,

anything from platform heels

to fitness shoes, and all that lies between.

She did not get her sense of style

from me.

When we go out, beside her

tall, beautiful elegance,

I feel like the frizzy-haired

Witch Down the Lane,

in my baggy sweatshirt

and scruffy jeans.

Yesterday I met an old hippy

over in Coombs.

Our laughing eyes

recognized each other.

(It must be something about

the Frizzy Hair:) )

He told me

he was in Haight Ashbury

Back in the Day,

that he wore thigh-high
leather boots, with buckles,
in which he promenaded
like Puss 'N Boots himself.

Back in the Day, I wore polyester

and pushed a buggy

with three little kids in it

inside the strait jacket

of a conventional marriage.

I didn't fit,

with my big unwieldy

unconventional spirit,

that kept bumping up against

the edges and confines

I was kept in,

till the madwoman finally

burst out of her prison

and was no longer mad.

In those days, while I pushed my buggy
mile after desperate mile,

I watched, with awe and envy,

the benign, coolly-dressed and

totally FREE-spirited beings

wandering smilingly

up and down Fourth Avenue,

wondering how they learned

to be so free.

I just missed that freedom bus

by fifteen seconds,

pushing my buggy along

a parallel street just one block down.

When I broke free, I remember pushing

my giggling babies in that same buggy,

hippety-hopping down the hill,

all of us laughing,

heading us all

towards a happier life.

I made up for missing the 60's

later, in coffeehouses in the 80's,

and in the Land of 
Aging Hippies in Tofino

in the 90's.
My shoes were never magic,
but they lifted me out of the desert,
over the mountains to my new world
in Clayoquot Sound,
and that was magic enough
for me.

My spirit never tried

to stuff itself back

into that little box

again.

The only magic shoes

that ever spoke to me were Dorothy's,

on that journey she made

away from and back to herself,

where she found she had always

had the power inside her,

her home within,

where she had started out.

This lifetime, my shoes

have walked me through

some of the most beautiful

landscapes in the world.

All I ever needed was a pair

that fit, that can carry me

into the wilderness I love.

A pair I kick off at the door

when I come home tired,

slide back into every time

I'm heading out.

How many more pairs

and pathways are there left me?

There's no knowing, but there's one thing

I know for sure: when music

from those years calls to my spirit,

I can still kick them off

and dance a lick or two

across my empty room.

For Susan's prompt at What's Going On? Magic Shoes.