here I sit with my …
shoes mismated – lawdy mercy
I is frustrated
Bad Morning by Langston Hughes
Here I sit
With my shoes mismated.
Lawdy-mercy!
I’s frustrated!
As printed in The collected poems of Langston Hughes by Langston Hughes, New York, Knopf, 1994.
Three days a week, I have to get up and drive into the office.
I may live in podunk but it’s an island podunk and there is only one way in and one way off and while there isn’t the volume of traffic that there is in Atlanta, for example, the drive is, in its own way, more exasperating than an Atlanta commute.
So I do the what I did when I lived in ATL.
I get up early to try and beat the traffic.
I get up early before the sun is up.
So I don’t bother the wife, I will get my clothes together the night before and set them out in the living room.
Before I go to bed I’ll check to make sure I got underwear, socks, pants, shirt, belt and shoes.
But there are those mornings where I forget something.
More often than not, it is socks.
So I stealthily sneak (always wanted to write that phrase) back into the bedroom and feel my way over to the dresser and open my sock drawer.
A sock drawer filled with … dark socks.
In the dark, in a dark room, fumbling in a dark drawer for dark socks.
Often I end up with socks that mismatch.
Maybe not as bad as shoes, and looking at my kids, I wonder if it matters.
But for me it is going into my day with one boot off.
Socks mismatched.
Shoes mismatched.
Lawdy MERCY!
I is frustrated.
No Haiku For You 