Kelly Ramsdell Fineman - Where Are Your Shoes?

Where Are Your Shoes?
by
Kelly Ramsdell Fineman

You've lost your shoes – you don't know where.
You do not have another pair.
Your mother says they're in your room.
You trod upstairs to face your doom.
They aren't lying on the floor,
Not on your desk, not in a drawer,
Behind the chair, under the bed –
They must be someplace else instead.
You pull the door – it makes a creak –
Into the closet's depths you peek.
The hanging clothes are all unhung
Mixed in a pile with things you flung.
You sift and dig. You sort and toss.
You start to become very cross.
Then finally, inside a box,
You find your shoes. Where are your socks?

©Kelly Ramsdell Fineman. All rights reserved.

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When Kelly Ramsdell Fineman's poem, Where Are Your Shoes?, appeared in my inbox, I was gleeful and a bit surprised. One of my favorite parts of hosting 30/30 is that I never know what people are going to send me, and Kelly has the type of poetic range that made prediction impossible. Would I get laughs? A sonnet or some other form? Or....? What I knew, however, is that I'd get something wonderful.

If you've followed Writing and Ruminating, Kelly's blog (where her ruminating is not to be missed, by the way), or seen her picture book, At the Boardwalk, or run into her poetry anywhere else it's been published, you'd no doubt share my opinion. With a keen eye and a great ability to push her reader just a little farther (as in... to socks!), it's always a treat to read her poetry... just as it's a treat for me to have Kelly Ramsdell Fineman here today as part of 30 Poets/30 Days.

Yesterday, Mary Lee Hahn gave us Green Door. Tomorrow... Andrew Fusek Peters with Blackbird! For more on 30 Poets/30 Days and ways to follow along, please click here.