the moral of the story

Yesterday I found
to my surprise
that my morality was all worn out.
Holes in the soles
let the pavement cold in,
and my feet ached
from the bumps and knobbles
of my neighborhood street,
and unsightly tears
were all about.

So yesterday I went shopping
for a new morality.
Surely I'd find one to suit me, I thought,
in the vast sistine corridors
of the mall.
Surely, amidst thousands displayed,
was the morality for me.

But nowhere, alas, did I find that which I wore;
thin-soled, soft, curving to fit my very shape.
It had gone out of fashion.

Three shops were scandalously expensive.
Modelled on designer's dreams
unsullied by reality, they
were not meant for casual
or rugged use
and were priced accordingly.

So I went into a store and asked for something practical.
Something sensible.
Sensible and practical they had,
like horses' hooves, 
but no beauty and glamour; 
no slight breath of divinity
to soften the harsh lines of stitching
and the tough, intractable
rawhide lacing.

I found one, finally, that suited me.
The shaker aesthetic: 
beauty in simplicity and functionality,
and what's more,
it didn't cost my soul.
But they didn't have it 
in 9 1/2 wide,
and although I could squeeze my toes together
and walk around the store,
I could not imagine this morality
stretching, one day, to fit.

I swooned over one,
dorothy's ruby ethic come to life--
but the heels were too high,
and turned my ankles,
and admiration was not worth the price
of a hobbled stride.

In my size, but not in yellow;
in green, 
but not, quite, sturdy enough.
And all the while
Mine own grew more tattered in the looking,
more dismal at the sight of such
shining, novel competition.

Perhaps, I thought, I could make my own morality.
But such efforts
are bulky and clumsy if performed
by one not practiced in the art.

What to wear, what to wear?
Perhaps a perfect fit isn't to be found.
Perhaps my present comfortable,
beloved unloveliness
was once too red, or green, or narrow...
I had forgotten, by now,
which of us originally accomodated the other.

Regardless, a choice is now essential;
to go barefoot is to freeze in the snow.