The Symphony's Shoes
The Waking Border
I spent the day slipping toilet paper rolls
Onto toilet paper holders
Fixing faucets
Raking leaves into an indifferent wind
Two days ago from a front row seat
I listened to the symphony and noticed
All its shoes
Patent leather mostly on men’s feet
Glossy in the stage lights
Solid platforms for the bowing violinists
And the prosthetic left leg of that one cellist
Which is high praise for shoes that have never
Made contact with bare earth
On the women’s feet they were all over the place
And well-used
Black stilettos and pumps in high gloss or not
A pair on a bassist covered in fabric
And on the feet of one violist
Hiking boots which made me regret
I did not speak to her
After the Rimsky-Korsakov
Yesterday I occupied myself with the mundane
Good thing the solar wind breaks across the outer atmosphere
The way air encounters a speeding windshield. Otherwise
We’d catch it full in the face, hair blown back, cheeks flapping.
We’d mount our own resistance, sure, but suffer the inevitable
Vertigo of our conscious hurtling through days and nights diurnal.
We’d walk the waking border between panic and exhaustion,
sleep fitfully, arms and legs the limbs of a spiral starfish just beached,
And, waking, remember only our restlessness. We’d resist
The inclination to grab hold, the fear of being
Flung from the surface, the end ones on a snapping whip.
We’d lie to ourselves.
Thomas Gremaud spends his time teaching, reading, and roasting coffee. He worries that his reputation precedes him.
