“Ode”

by Minati Singh

I
Lately, with an extremism born of spring,
I’ve been considering whether a life in sensible
shoes is really worth living.
And trying not to feel the throb
of old injuries the prodigal seasons
renew (boots-sandals-boots,
time teetering by) – flowery
calluses, corns with their gemlike core,
flora unspeakable that flourish in the humid
hospitality of the lower extremities.

II
Poor feet, they need romancing.
I’ve crowned them with every meaning, and once
I missed a flight, London to Pittsburgh,
to buy these high-heeled slingbacks,
mock-croc, blue as an ancient
sea, I’d seen in a high-street
shop window. I wore them on the next
plane out, to Baltimore,
and then four hours in a rented car
home, my blue foot singing
on the gas (with every rest stop
in the world flung far behind):
Angels don’t need acceleration,
but we who rely on our feet have
to work to pick up speed.

III
My father walked for a living, surveying
tracts of jungle, swamps, furrowed
foothills. He had a retinue, this was before
spying satellites could tell us where everything
was. He and his chainmen, they called them, measured,
calculated, triangulated
by the stars, camping in a high valley
or grudging village, sometimes losing
their way. Their feet went everywhere.
They mapped with their bodies. We visited
him at camp, Dhulikhel, off
the Chinese Road outside Kathmandu.
I would have followed him to the ends of the earth. My eyes
wanted to tell him, but he drew contours in the mud
with a stick to teach me and looked away.

IV
Instinctive refugees, ingenious
feet, built to flee. I remember
the first time I was caught, and who
can forget the first time, that augurs
every time afterward? The thick
arm holding me down. The face
of the victor, its childish pink, above
my drumming ribs. In terror we break
into parts that are less than the sum of the parts,
and brain thought, feet didn’t save me,
feet couldn’t think beyond
the charge, and there they were, stupid
blocks, no use to anyone.

V
Lucky, though, to have feet. And not
have had to trade one’s voice for them,
like that dumb little mermaid who gave up
her salty blue home with its branching
coral gardens and her sweet tongue,
believing that to be human was lovable.
Lucky, too, that feet take us
forward, every step a young future,
and feet won’t go where
we don’t belong, to the past.