Shoes From The Sea Poem by Sally Evans

Shoes from the rough icy sea
with voices chanting above,
boots of boys and men,
legions of sandals,
children crying and playing,
girls and men by the sea,
anklet and heel, tide-washed
salted uppers, the time
the the took to sweep them
as these shoes' inhabitants
communed with shore and sky.

Who has not walked by the tide
and seen, among seaweed and wood,
a wonderful sea-washed door,
a lost canvas, serviceable,
and who has not seen sleep
in the limpets and grains
a slipper, a woman's shoe,
a plimsoll, always singly?
The partner never comes
for the sea is lonely,
the shoe's owner a ghost
forever walking the sands
or wading the long tides.
Now, if I see a shoe
by the shoreline, I know it anew,
shoe from the rough icy sea
with a voice to speak and cry.

1984
[Clearances]