After reading Neruda’s “Ode to My Socks,” Sylvi and I listed things about which we might write a poem. Among Sylvi’s list was peanut butter, scissors, and her brother. My list included my old toe shoes.
In the middle of the night
I would wonder
what I would grab in case of fire.
I was twelve years old.
I feared mushroom clouds
and “duck & cover.”*
My parents out for the night.
Hostile babysitter.
Would they ever return?
From my bed
I surveyed the window.
Climb out on the roof?
Flames licking my feet,
pink toe shoes
dancing against disaster.
* The ritual of “duck and cover” was started in the public schools in 1945 as a method of personal protection against a nuclear explosion.