Behind You on a London Street

The shoes from Florence
have thick high heels.
Black, thick heels.
Carved from wood,
cut from leather
I guess, that some
perfectly-weathered old
Florentine sculpted with
calloused hands and
tools that remembered
calloused feet and jackboots
from Il Duce's reign.
They force up your calves,
tear-drop
curved muscles,
round out your hips
in the shifting, silk
second skin of your
bright red mini-skirt.
They wrap thick straps
around your ankles,
making that deep-blue dolphin
I inked into your skin
a year ago
leap for joy
above a leather horizon.
The Florence shoes
love your hourglass
with thick calves,
and big hips,
and your waist like
a whale-bone corset.
They love to
curve you up like the
Willendorf Venus
in an Amsterdam window.
In your Florence shoes,
deep-purple toe nails
just start to peek out
from below hand-crafted
shadows,
and you click against the sidewalk
hard and wet in a light rain
still swinging that sway in
the mellow buzz of your
last beer and ale and gin.
I let you walk two
steps ahead of me.

E. Doyle-Gillespie