#6) Shoelace

One dancing shoe hangs
from the washing line by a pink ribbon
lace, and sways to the blown
-away music or sometimes, the quiet
humming of bees when they come close.
The garden is overgrown
and pegs divide the line
like paled toy birds, fasting
for a daybreak that keeps coming,
but never remains.

This house is old.
The garden became separate long ago
and the faces that sometimes glance
from the windows, are shadows,
or video-tape rewinds, dusted with age
and tracking lines.
Rewind again—
see how that shoe swings
and hangs lower when it rains.

The sound distorts
and you know your voice has changed.
Yet there is something nostalgic
or lonely about it now—
the voices of ghosts laugh
as you press play.

Dew glistens on the pink satin,
moulding.

Returning home you find fences folded
into each other, broken for easy passage.
The grass grows through the wire
squares, hiding it like a trap,
but that shoe still hangs there, tied
to the line like a margin for the constellations.
Cassiopeia watches the pirouette
of one tiny shoe
as the grass sways, gone to seed
in a garden of sentiment.

The house is empty now.
One little pink shoe twists in the wind
on its ribbon safety rope,
and then unwinds,
drooping.