Shoes
Posted on | August 8, 2012 | 2 Comments
In the midst of the trauma that assails our consciousness every day, whether it is the butchery in Syria or the insanity of violence in our own country, we still have to live our daily lives. We have to keep whatever senses we have open to the world immediately before us. And so today I honor shoes, those humble instruments, those seductive adornments. Here’s what popped out.
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What do they talk about all day
the shoes
toe to toe
the heels
up against the wall?
While I blink
before the sun and headlights…
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William J. Everett
In my teaching career I authored eight books and numerous articles in social ethics and religion. After over thirty years of academic work — in Germany, India, and South Africa as well as in the United States — I wanted to turn my hand to a poetically written novel to probe the issues of ecological and human reconciliation.
When I am not writing, I create furniture for worship settings. For more about my work, go to www.WisdomsTable.net, where you will also find galleries of artwork by my wife Sylvia, whose ancestors were the original inspiration for Red Clay, Blood River. READ MORE...
TURNINGS: Poems of Transformation
Like works in
wood upon a lathe, these poems are word-turnings that reveal the inner grain of our human experience. They are bowls to catch our turnings of memory, conversion, falling in love, and passing through our seasons and the wrenching turns that mark our lives. Above all these turnings are a shout of praise, a murmur of wonder, a turning away from life as usual, a merciful re-turning to the songs, images and stories that move our lives.
You can get TURNINGS at:
For More on TURNINGS:
Red Clay Blood River
Red Clay, Blood River is a story told by Earth about two brothers from Germany and an enslaved South African woman whose lives bind together America’s “Trail of Tears” and South Africa’s simultaneous “Great Trek” of 1838. You can get Red Clay, Blood River at:
Booklocker--also in ebook version (PDF)In South Africa at: www.Loot.co.za and www.Kalahari.net
August 8th, 2012 @ 8:05 pm
I love this poem, especially while they lie silent with slack tongues.
I want to save this poem and read it for my students.
thanks for sharing it.
August 9th, 2012 @ 12:13 pm
Very charming, Bill, and I’ll never think of my shoes in the same way again. I have marveled at the patience of shoes when you may go a whole season or year without using them. There they are, just waiting and hoping.
Penny