Coda.
Some thought about a shoe, set me to stringing
the eye holes of a memory.
My mother, the old dear, would eschew such knowledge now
for other than my ear.
But when she was a few months married,
was in fact still singing, she wore
a pair of emu-feathered slippers from the bed,
and dangled lazily about a little spangle house.
I suppose she spent time winding up her hair,
it was then red, and washed a few cups.
The usual recess.
I've seen a blouse she wore in those days.
Tucked to a formal stiffness, sweetly white.
How thin she was.
The picture doesn't catch the tones
of skin, the essence of her freshness, her light buoyancy.
Now, when she goes about with feathers,
she wears them upon hat.
It seems so odd to me that once she
owned a poodle who loved her silly shoes
and took them up like bones to chew
and ate the feathers of long dead emus.
Because in all the time I lived with her,
she wore the plainest shoes, and all our pets were cats.