Barefoot

1. July 28 2021

I have very ugly feet — thanks to my mother’s insistence when I was a child that my shoes be elegant

Wincing, I spread my bare toes on the asphalt –

First barefoot walk this year; my feet are more than naked,

Tender and pink, peeled, babies’ feet,

Feeling every stone, every roughness intensely.

I hobble round the block, it takes ten minutes.

Carpet is kind after the asphalt.

*

Every morning I go for a barefoot walk,

A little longer each time. I explore

Red, grey, black, speckled grey, yellowish asphalt,

Badly pitted and lumpy hurts intensely.

Oddly the road is smoother with larger softer lumps;

Grass is luxury, coolth, a velvet relief,

I am obsessed with the coloured patchwork of asphalt.

*

Six weeks later my babies’ feet

Have grown up. My feet aren’t so naked.

I no longer feel the ground so intensely,

I spurn the road, seek out different kinds of asphalt,

I walk down to say hello to the sea barefoot.

*

Small children gasp at my bare feet,