A road can't be as sad as a shoe is sad
when a shoe can't read.
I can't read either.
...
Why is everything I do in my life like a boomerang?
I throw the paper airplane out the window
and the wind sends it back.
I spit against the wind.
...
I ran into an old time sailor, up on Market Street;
We had a cup of coffee, his last name was McLees;
He fought in the Pacific, on Portsmouth submarines;
I asked about the Squalus, this is what he told me.
...
1. The Enigma of Arrival
We are nude beneath our costumes
as in the false myths we have been forced
...
The fog peers in the windows, passes 'neath the lamps
Settles in the doorways and huddles from the damp
Slips inside the houses, rooms, the sleeper's bed and dreams
It rolls him over, turns him out into the shrouded street.
...
John Perrault is a lawyer, teacher, poet, and balladeer. Over the years he has performed his songs and poems in numerous venues throughout New England, including The New England Folk Festival, The Maine Festival, The Prescott Park Arts Festival, Chautauqua, Writers' Day for the New Hampshire Writers' Project, The Maine Writers Conference, The Seacoast Writers Conference, Passim, The Stone Church, and countless libraries, schools and coffee houses. He is the author of Jefferson's Dream, The Ballad of Louis Wagner and other New England Stories in Verse, and Here Comes the Old Man Now. He was poet laureate of Portsmouth, NH, 2003 - 2005.)
Shoe
A road can't be as sad as a shoe is sad
when a shoe can't read.
I can't read either.
And I have given away all my clothes
and gone away so far
that no one will even remember that I've gone
nor how far I went when I was here.
For a road can't be as crazy as a ranch is mad
when a ranch can't sing.
I cough. I spit. I jump up and down
and I run around like a headless rooster.
Me too. I am not lonesome. I am gregarious.
I make friends with the curbstone even.
But a shoe can't be as pretty as a wheel when it's turning
or a tunnel uncovered by chance.
And a shoe can't be a lobster.
I am as free as a belt or a bell or
a dog on a leash
gone crazy with the aroma of flagpoles.
John is such a skillful writer.