Reading: Finding a Shoe

As if looking for my other shoe under our bed 
When I have not troubled to turn on any of the three bedroom lamps
And the shoe is black 
And not recently polished so as to send my way 
Some of the light that 
Has slipped the double curtains 
Into our room 
To escape the winter dusk 
And we are due to dinner with old friends in exactly 
The half hour it will take 
To sprint and speed and park and sprint 
To the restaurant where 
They will announce a divorce  
And we will end the evening, us two,
Having parted from them with all assurances, 
In a silent walk, like from a burial, 
Ashamed of our luck
This cannot be done with one shoe
Nor two shoes that do not match 
That is rude 

And so
As if looking for my other shoe under our bed 
And pawing and blaming and with no sense 

That is how I look for ways 
To write about death 

January 2021