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Conduct a sneaker imprint city
Pull the cord for the first stop
Melt into your seat
And crunch
Some popcorn beneath your heel
Pace the bas relief carefully
Study the indent of time
From footstep to first step
From succession to expression
Crossing eventually street car tracks
An ancient bobby pin
Beside sewer steel
Rusted into clock hands and
Stuck quick like contact cement
In bubble gum
Lift your leg, stare at ground
Buildings whirling round and round
Woven dogmas fly, unravel out of grasp
Curling wails fade ghosts behind
And last patterned lines dissolve
The giant sneaker, laces dangling
Powerful and downward,
Stamps and crushes and creates
One instance only
Once...
For the spans of an imprint
Original version Copyright © 1972 Lorraine Chrystal
Dmitrovic
(The original version of "The Sneaker Imprint City" was
published in the early 1970s in Abacus, the official newspaper of
Victoria Park Secondary School in North York, Ontario, Canada)
Revised version Copyright © 2006 Lorraine Chrystal Dmitrovic
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