flashback forward

monday’s big tent poetry prompt: feet
photo: baby feet…,  mgrphotos, flickr

inquisitive eyes
hindsight hands
finger tracing translucence

an unexpected find
folded and found
torn and tattered
yellowed piece of paper
my hospital birth certificate

the paper says
i was born on this day
at this time and
stuck my feet in black ink
to prove i was

oh little feet
tell me the places
we shall go

size so small
soft as butter attributes
activated lines and shadows
eye witness to a future
the ol’ gypsy woman foretells

fresh little feet
did tell then
what now is when
how far i would travel
and the miles i’d run
to espy the rainbow’s
ancestral home

sometimes my feet sing
shifting from a long note
to a thousand quick beats of patter
skipping over burdens
as a child at play

oh he sez but they are pretty
otherwise he wouldn’t have stayed
it’s all in the feet he sez

consumed in a flashback
i’m walking forward
along weedy old tracks
some long forgotten
abandoned railroad line
remember the rattling train