Sunday Shoes Poem by Clifton King

I don’t own a pair
of Sunday shoes,
leather tanned
from the hide
of an unborn calf,
supple
as a woman’s thigh.

Shoes
stitched in Italy,
in small shops
on cobbled streets
where once
Caesar’s legion marched,
where today
motor scooters scurry,
beautiful women
perched on the back
clinging
to their lovers.

Sunday shoes
are saved for church
and funerals,
as if God, or the dead,
care
about footwear.