two feet tall
i. upside
there’s two of me.
what you like to call your feet. like you think
we belong to you. but we have our name inside
hidden in socks
bound and coiled and wound up tight
and ready to leap into elemental flight
and we won’t say.
we keep the world spinning by our strides.
sort of like a canoe, paddling about.
but understand it’s not for you. rather
it’s gravity oozing between our toes,
climbing in stitches out from in,
why we dance, dance till sediment and rock
remember us. one blood when we began.
ii. down
like cowboy boots that fit too tight.
we matter most to you in ignorance.
see how we make our point changing
your familiar steady state.
then we’ll go walking on the bottoms
of clouds, tails over heads.
you’ll think it’s your lucky day and
you’ll be right.
neil reid © january 2012 (posted in February)
part one, of a body series
commentary
Catching up with this missed prompt. Unhappy with what was till recently incomplete. Now given free rein. Be it as it is. I feel interested in where this “body series” may go and want to be complete, bottom up. (Although equally so, my interest has moved on by at least a step or two, so won’t linger here.) Would be nice, just to begin, if each in this series was able to write itself anew, not just added on to what was before. We’ll see how that goes!
Written to We Write Poems, prompt #87,
Begin at the Bottom, The Body, a series, part 1.
Please find the prompt responses of other writers here.
