BOOTLESS SPECULATIONS

Solo 1: One fact eccentric I often muse on:

Girls of sixteen won’t keep their shoes on.

All: Girls, at sixteen, for all our strictures,

Are proper as Puritans,

Pretty as pictures.

Solo 2: With waists cinched tightly,

Solo 3: Wearing ponytails,

Solo 4: They move more lightly

Than a hip with sails,

Than roses shaking

The summer dews off—

Solo 1: But why must they always be taking their shoes off?

Solo 5: Girls of sixteen

Have rows and rows

Of fanciful, lean

Capezios.

Solo 6: Helter-skelter,

To point of scandal,

Their closets shelter

Slipper and scandal,

All: Glass shoes, gilt shoes,

Shoes with baubles on,

Three-inch-stilt shoes

That anyone wobbles on,

Shoes gone risible,

Shoes for sport,

Shoes without visible

Means of support.

Solo 7: Each maidenly foot is a clad-with-care foot,

Solo 1: But how do they go?

Why, chiefly barefoot.

Solo 8: They never enter

Their entrance halls

But front and center

The footwear falls:

All: Pumps under sofas;

Brogues on the stairs;

Loathsome loafers

Beneath wing chairs;

Solo 9: Shoes on the landing.

Lost in flight;

On porches standing

Overnight,

While, lets a-taper,

Combing their curls,

Blithely caper

The discalced girls.

Solo 10: Shoeless they chatter their gossip windy

Or barefoot at parties

Dance the Lindy.

Solo 1: Girls at sixteen have depth unsounded.

Of sugar and spice

Are they compounded;

All: Sweetly their powers

Shame doubting Thomases;

They keep late hours

But keep their promises;

Solo 1: They keep cool heads

For the course they cruise on.

So why in the world can’t they keep their shoes on?