feet

Friends, mine are ugly feet:

the body's common wreckage

stuffed into boots. The second toe

on the left foot's crooked

enough that when a child

asks what's that? of it,

I can without flinch or fear of doubt lie

that a cow stepped on it

which maybe makes them fear cows

for which I repent

in love as I am with those philosophical beasts

who would never smash my feet

nor sneer at them

the way my mother does:

"We always bought you good shoes, honey,"

she says, "You can't blame us

for those things," and for this

and other reasons

I have never indulged in the pleasure

of flip-flops shy or ashamed

digging my toes like ten tiny ostriches into the sand

at the beach with friends

who I'm not sure love me,

though I don't think Tina loved me-

she liked me, I think-but said

to me, as we sat on lawn chairs

beside a pool where I lifeguarded and was meticulous

at obscuring from view with a book or towel

my screwy friends,

You have pretty feet,

in that gaudy, cement-mixer, Levittown accent

that sends all the lemurs scaling my ribcage to see

and she actually had pretty feet

and so I took this as a kindness incomparable and probably

fell a little bit in love with her for that afternoon

with the weird white streak in her hair

and her machinegun chatter and her gum snapping

and so slid my feet from beneath my Powerman and Iron Fist comic book

into the sun for which they acted like plants opening their tiny mouths

to the food hurtling to them through the solar system,

and like plants you could watch them almost smile,

almost say thank you, you could watch them

turn colors, and be, almost, emboldened,

none of which Tina saw

because she was probably digging in her purse

or talking about that hottie on The Real World

or yelling at some friend's little sister to put her ass in her trunks

or pouring the crumbs of her Fritos into her thrown open mouth

but do you really think I'm talking to you about my feet?

Of course she's dead: Tina was her name, of leukemia: so I heard-

why else would I try sadly to make music of her unremarkable kindness?

I am trying, I think, to forgive myself

for something I don't know what.

But what I do know is that I love the moment when the poet says

I am trying to do this

or I am trying to do that.

Sometimes it's a horseshit trick. But sometimes

it's a way by which the poet says

I wish I could tell you,

truly, of the little factory

in my head: the smokestacks

chuffing, the dandelions

and purslane and willows of sweet clover

prying through the blacktop.

I wish I could tell you

how inside is the steady mumble and clank of machines.

But mostly I wish I could tell you of the footsteps I hear,

more than I can ever count,

all of whose gaits I can discern by listening, closely.

Which promptly disappear

after being lodged again,

here, where we started, in the factory

where loss makes all things

beautiful grow.