A Poem A Day - Shoe Lace And Thyme Bag Poem by Rita El Khoury

He's bending down to tie his shoe lace
Two cars pass as fast as if they have a race
Making the mud fly towards his new jeans,
He starts to rise up but then he leans
Back and hardly swallows his curse
As if he's saving it to a situation much worse.

He tries to tie the lace for the second time
But it gets loose and lends in the bag of thyme
Of the fat old woman standing next to his feet
Waiting for a taxi to pass by the street
But he's too shy to ask for his lace back
So he leaves it with the thyme in the stack.

And not even one damn taxi would arrive,
Would it hurt him if he had learned how to drive?
Sadly, he keeps leaning, looking at the floor
Seeking for a magical stone to take him off shore,
It's noon and the sun hurts his buttocks
A dropp of sweat lands on his Armani socks.

Now he's filled with mud from belt to toe
Thinking how the hell he dropped this low,
He's an unemployed twenty five years old
With a defeated soul auctionned to be sold,
Undone hair, sweating forehead and one untied shoe
Standing like a fool who doesn't know what to do.

He's been waiting for an hour but he doesn't worry
It's not as if he is in some kind of hurry,
He just wants to get home before the night
And cry himself to sleep as he thinks he might.
The lady left with the thyme bag and his lace
But he won't make, from this accidental theft, a case.

He keeps leaning towards the floor with such grace
So no one on the street could see his angel face.