Eratosphere - The Oldie Stepping Out

STEPPING OUT
The Oldie Competition
by Tessa Castro

IN COMPETITION NO 147 you were invited to write a poem called 'New Shoes'. Many of the entries took an anthropomorphic approach. 'You were always "my old shoe", / And now you're gone,' began Andy Wigginss sad verse. A few preferred the hippomorphic. L Gould was having none of fashion: 'All of this nonsense seems to be quite irrational, / But I need two pairs 'cos I'm in the Grand National.' Tony Dawson, like others, remembered that, as children, 'We'd step inside this strange machine, / And see a picture of our feet.' Margaret Miller gave us the seven ages of shoes, with the familiar caution from one's mother not to scuff one's school shoes - as if such an accident could be avoided. Bill Greenwells narrator, like many men, hated to sit around in a shoe shop waiting for the woman to try on countless pairs. He concluded, alarmingly: 'I think I'll kill you now, with this stiletto.' Commiserations to all of these, and congratulations to those printed below, each of whom wins £25, with the lovely new sure-fit bonus prize of a Chamber's Biographical Dictionary going to Gail White.

The lowest heels are fine for work, said I,
But for a party I'm in love with spikes.
And there you were, fully three inches high,
With silver straps and pointed toes. One likes
The lowest heels for working in the yard
Or at the office, but you tempted me
With your high glossy polish. I fell hard
And would have kept your fancy company
Forever, but I found that you could pinch
Severely, and the skin came off my toes.
You were the kind who never gives an inch.
I had to learn what every lover knows:
True love's not often the first crush one feels.
Sometimes high steppers are the lowest heels.
Gail White

Buying pigs in pokes, our mums would tell us,
Was guaranteed to be a waste of cash;
Imagine all the rubbish they might sell us,
But nowadays, it seems, we're just as rash.
Some people order footwear through the ether!
It's not the mode of purchase I would choose;
They notify the size
and a courier brings their buys...
There must be more than that to buying shoes!

Some people order shoes by way of email!
Technology is fine, but where's the fun?
Though I'm a busy, modern kind of female,
Some shopping must be diligently done.
Nothing beats a trawl along the High Street—
It banishes the deep recession blues.
Three hours down the mall,
and youil be walking tall,
There's nothing so transforming as new shoes!
Bernadette Evans

Still dean, still fresh: none of the scratches, stains
and tell-tale scuffs experience rubs in.
None of that wear the daily grind ingrains
but heels immaculate, and laces thin,
not furred and thickened by re-tying; not
printed by all the roads too often trudged
not grubby with wrong choices; not a spot
of grease or tar, or extra mile begrudged.
They've never walked away or chickened out
or made excuses, slipped away too soon.
Their shining newness: what it's all about
to failure, doubt and drudgery immune.
Look how their soles are still unscarred, as bright
as hope, as free from all concern,
and ready to step forward, eager, light.
poor innocents; they've everything to learn.
DA Prince

That Easter was unusually cold.
Under grey skies a mean chill wind
penetrated the already cheerless house.

Father's effects—
a cornelian Roman seal, odd bits illogically accumulated
triggering questions never asked.
Dully aching, the message registered
that such a moment now was gone,
that special door had been quietly dosed up tight,
with velvet permanence.
One last cupboard, there they were
brand new, never worn, always ready, always waiting...

...unwittingly to be bequeathed
to an unknown unaware and maybe grateful beneficiary.
Good luck!
Ted lane