"One shoe, two feet"

for Emily Dickinson

1
One shoe, two feet -
indiscreet -
but incomplete.

Sour kisses -
understood -
climbing higher -
burning wood.

"I wrote some lines
to catch a tune
I'd sing to you
when you were blue."

Rhyming is
- not -
hard to do,

Loving is
- quite! -
fun for you;

2
are you ever afraid
of your fluttering feet
touching the sound
of unhallowed ground?

Once you touched roughly
the amateur stubble
of the not-yet-grey
trouble
I was-am-now-not:

i.e., Eternity winked but you missed it.

Thus and therefore:

you wished me away
and so I went
- quickly! -
and now I am
- glad. -
to be present
in everyone's absence.