The Museum of Tiny Shoes
Barry Taylor
for Rebecca Kidd

The Museum is open every
alternate year, the second
Tuesday after Whitsun.
All through the grave-quiet interim, 
the tiny shoes persist, serene
in their dust-free compounds,  
policed by scholarship 
and lasers. They glint 
in their laconic rows, 
preserved from the sly assaults 
of breath and flesh. 

The shoes stand gloomily
lit, like cargo fallen 
through a mile of buckling sun 
to the ocean floor. 
They have landed cleanly, 
as if disposed by careful 
giant hands. There are brogues 
and loafers, pumps and flats, 
and sneakers, the size of plump, 
retracting slugs, rain-polished
chanterelles, or a maiden’s thumb.  

A patina of loving daily use 
still shines on them
in the Spring light pooling 
in the galleries’ corners. 
The cognoscenti sway back 
on their heels, dangle their specs
and smile, as they might 
at a promising niece, or a puzzle
involving ziggurats and oatmeal. 
Others mutter, stepping away 
affronted. They have not paid 
good money for this. 

Looming attendants rein in dreams 
of seven-league boots (their own)
crashing down on the tiny 
despots who confine them
to their silent stations.
On tip-toe, wary toddlers 
peek, imagine shrunken parents 
tottering, too much an image
of themselves. 

Closing up, five evenings 
every decade, the Museum rings 
to the fall of a few last feet 
converging on the only exit, 
diminishing, step by step.