I walk discovering

I’m not wearing shoes.

I feel the rough soil

reasonable to feet.

But I enjoyed those shoes,

left in one of three places.

People of all ages walk toward and with me

on a cloudless Sunday, coastal plain, beach city

without pattern.

I retrace my steps and check

to see if the neighbor’s wife found the child

I was watching, her youngest.

I pass the blue wall

And ask in an upstairs fish restaurant

If they’d found any shoes. Yes, no flip-flops.

Three friends I lunched with,

impromptu, were gone,

men at lunch testing, outraging each other.

The younger one with them refused.

We allied.

Later I walk unaware

Of shoes, wave to the neighbor’s wife on the sand

Who finally found the child 

who strolled out of the village.

I am happy.

Lawrence Bridges' poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, and The Tampa Review. He has published three volumes of poetry: Horses on Drums (Red Hen Press, 2006), Flip Days (Red Hen Press, 2009), and Brownwood (Tupelo Press, 2016). You can find him on IG: @larrybridges