Monday, May 31, 2010

Her Shoes at My Door















Her Shoes at my Door

She forgot her shoes at the milonga.
I agreed to take them to her the next day,
But this morning I saw them waiting at my door
And I lost my senses for a moment.
"Maybe I could keep them," I told myself.
"They look good at my door,"
I thought.

I reluctantly decided to give them back.
So I drove by and dropped them off.
"Shoe delivery!"
I said.

She, her husband, the dogs, the cat and I
Talked for a while.
But my mind wandered for a while
Back to the shoes by my door, my mind
Wandered to a pretend world, a woman in my life.
She was upstairs watching a tango video,
Telling me to come upstairs
To see.

She just took a shower.
I felt her presence, good to have her here.
I was fooling myself that I could live without her,
That I could live without a companion.

Yes, I was fooling myself.
I had to give the shoes back.
No woman upstairs,
No woman freshly out of the shower,
Talking to her dog, as if he understood,
Swooning over a tango film clip
On the computer screen.

My shoes sit now alone at the door.
I wonder if they are angry at me.
Her shoes told me more about myself
Than I was ready for this morning.

The novel woman,
With her shoes at my door
Was a fiction written
Just for me.
By a lonely heart.

by Mark Word
31 May 2010


Photo credit:
"Los Zapatos Abandonados,"
by
Sybille Word
18 Jan 2017

6 comments:

  1. so beautiful, Mark. It sounds like a tango. It's surprising what brings those moments of the duende to the surface. To me it feels like the point, but occasionally also, weight of tango.

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  2. Did you write that? Oh so gorgeous....BP

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  3. Queridas BP y Mari... Thanks for your comments. Of course I wrote this, Señorita BP! Wonder if you recognize the shoes. ;-) Another tanguera that wrote me an email suggested that it would make great tango lyrics (Mari too). Well, maybe I can convert this to Spanish, make the words more lyrical, and give them to Austin's Piazzolla Quintet for a melancholic tango. A ver que pasará.

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  4. No creo que el poema puede ser más hermoso - incluso en español. :)

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  5. How about a Tango with English words so English speakers can be moved by the words as well as with the music? Eileen

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