The Lady of Baltimore doesn't know
how to erase the line between those who are
oblivious to the notion of a having better life
and those who are oblivious to the notion
of having a worse one.
The Lady of Baltimore clicks her red shoes
survey's the conveyances of Lexington Market,
drifts off on a temporal cloud
in search of the exit from never never land.
The Lady of Baltimore
loves her red shoes,
but has no energy for dancing
for the living, makes no claim on the future,
strains against gravity.
Linda Joy Burke
All Rights Reserved By Author
2 comments:
What inspired this poem?
I saw a woman with red shoes,
a red fake alligator bag,
and a red skirt,
sitting on a bench
on Howard Street
in front of Lexington Market
In Baltimore,
she was nodding so bad
that I thought she'd
fall off the bench
onto the street
in front of my car,
the next day,
I saw another lady,
so out of it, she could
barely make it
across the street
and up on the curb, to the
same bench where the
woman with the red shoes
had sat the day before.
What I saw got me to thinking about vulnerablity, mortality and symbols. Which is why the red shoes and dancing.
There is a fairy tale called the Red Shoes, about a little orphan girl who is given a new guardian. The woman takes her to get a pair of shoes for church, but the little girl covets a pair of red shoes, which she really shouldn't have. The cobbler gives them to the little girl. The girl is overjoyed and puts them on immediately. Her guardian cannot see that they are red not black as they should be. When the little girl leaves the shoemaker with her feeble sighted elderly guardian, a man outside of the shop puts a spell on the shoes, saying dance little girl dance. Well the little girl dances all the way home, to the frustration of the guardian. The elder along with other servants, have to hold the child down, to pull the shoes off of her. They put them high out of her reach on a bureau. But the child wants them badly, she loved dancing, so she climbs up and retrieves the shoes. As soon as she puts them on, she begins to dance. She dances joyfully at first, then she realizes she cannot stop. She dances through sun ups and sun downs, she dances till the fat begins to melt from her body, and she is merely flesh and bones. she cannot rest. eventually she sees a wood cutter with an ax in his hands. She pleads with him to help her. He cuts off her feet so she can stop dancing.
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