The Shoes You Threw Up There

My house is situated in an older part of the town of Gladstone, a totally residential neighborhood, a mix of older and newer lower value houses and on my street at least duplexes. This neighborhood is only a couple blocks from Gladstone’s main streets, Dartmouth and Portland Avenue, which splits the town into east and west. I am a duplex of sorts too, taxed a little unfairly because the other domicile is really a studio apartment though it is in a stand alone building. I cannot rent it for a price fair to the taxes. Nearby there are apartments where once there were only houses, some older and some newer. Some of the older householders here lament how the neighborhood has gone downhill. Really though, I think it’s a pretty good neighborhood, and I am friends with the neighbors next door to the left and across from them. The neighbor across and to my right is caring for my old cat now and my cat gets to be much warmer there in the laundry room instead of here in my garage. I have taken to feeding Hellboy on my porch. He’s the feral cat who lives on that neighbor’s porch. It’s only fair.

It has gotten colder. With a nod to my friends in Whitehorse and Mendenhall, it gets dark at 5:30, not 3:30, and by colder I mean above freezing still. The goldfinches have regained their bright yellow breasts for some reason. They flock around my feeder still, and the Canada geese herds are still mining the grassy verges on the road. A hundred or so gather sometimes, with two or three on watch while the rest dig for food. I love the geese from a distance. They do not love us, but they do trust we will stay in our cars.

There is a school, Gladstone High School not far to the northeast. Due east three blocks is an elementary school and behind it Gladstone’s main park where every year the city fair is held. We have a parade, you know, just as we did in the Willamette neighborhood where I lived before. On the high wires of a couple nearby intersections are one tied pair of sneakers each, dangling there for years now. I watch them slowly degrade in the seasons. They have held up quite well.

There. I hardly allowed any sentence fragments in this post. That better, Mom? This is her house I live in. She bought it to be near me in her last years, since Lees Summit, near Kansas City, Missouri where my sister still lives because Mom lived there once turned out to be mean streets for her.

The Shoes You Threw Up There

I couldn't throw them
today, not if I tried, not
to save my old life.

Shoes across the wire
take shoulders that swing easy
to toss them high up
and over to stay.

My shoulders complain often
now, and so the rest
as well, twinges that
speak clearly of the sometime
journey I will take.

March 02, 2009 2:15 PM