My Shoes Are Killing Me
CBC Books | CBC | Posted: March 6, 2017 4:34 PM | Last Updated: March 9, 2017
Robyn Sarah
In My Shoes Are Killing Me, poet Robyn Sarah reflects on the passing of time, the fleetingness of dreams, and the bittersweet pleasure of thinking on the "hazardous ... treasurehouse" that is the past. Natural, musical, meditative, warm, and unexpectedly funny, this is a restorative and moving collection from one of Canada's most well-regarded poets. (From Biblioasis)
From the book
Swept Away
How innocent are lovers
in the middle of their lives,
in the years when their lives thicken
and love, reckless love,
overtakes them like a summer storm.
What can they do but
bow to it, they are like trees
in the wind, lashed and tossed,
they are foolish, weeping in restaurants,
making and breaking pacts,
sending each other poems,
quotations, frantic messages,
pronouncements, promises — it is all
so impossible! — weeping in phone booths,
weeping in parked cars, forever scribbling
a note with a borrowed pencil
to slip under a closed door
— like these lines she scribbles now
to slip under the shut door
of the past, the door they shut fast
on the messy years they've chosen
not to revisit. Just a note to let them know,
in case they're in there, somewhere, still,
she doesn't hold it against them any more.
in the middle of their lives,
in the years when their lives thicken
and love, reckless love,
overtakes them like a summer storm.
What can they do but
bow to it, they are like trees
in the wind, lashed and tossed,
they are foolish, weeping in restaurants,
making and breaking pacts,
sending each other poems,
quotations, frantic messages,
pronouncements, promises — it is all
so impossible! — weeping in phone booths,
weeping in parked cars, forever scribbling
a note with a borrowed pencil
to slip under a closed door
— like these lines she scribbles now
to slip under the shut door
of the past, the door they shut fast
on the messy years they've chosen
not to revisit. Just a note to let them know,
in case they're in there, somewhere, still,
she doesn't hold it against them any more.
From My Shoes Are Killing Me by Robyn Sarah ©2015. Published by Biblioasis.