I Put My New Shoes On

Little Red Slippers

I am Dorothy in uncharted territory
walking the Yellow Brick Road
with all the confidence I can muster
if only to find myself trapped in the witch’s castle.
It’s an illusion we use—humility and ignorance—
to save ourselves from explanation
and undoubtedly from certain death.

Metaphorical death, as opposed to physical death,
may be more the case, I suppose,
than landing myself accidentally
in the lair of a witch.
It is a death, instead, that cools the soul
and stops the heart from valiantly beating.
It is the death that ignominy yields from;
the death that is born of failure.

I was brought here against my will
on the backlash of a storm
Mother Nature cruelly hurled at the earth.
Thrown around and whip lashed,
I landed on some nobility
and found myself hero and hunted alike.

Yellow continues, despite
the overwhelming glare of the bricks below,
to be my favorite color plastered across
this globe on which we skip,
barely skimming the surface.
This gives me some hope of finding
alleged great Emerald City
where maybe my shoes might carry me home.
But the witch lingers closer,
hovering still above my sight,
and I allow myself the ignorance
and the humility
to dispel any rumor I might be the one
she’s looking to kill.

I am Dorothy, I am dim, I hail
from some unknown state
where rainbows are just things
which I focus my imagination
so that I might be distracted and envision
I am something greater than this land.

July 16, 2008
Short on Money, but Long on Time