Absolution by Flip Flop

by D. Walsh Gilbert

As soon as I dropped
my flip-flop into Charlestown’s

Atlantic, knee-deep in outgoing
tide, it was gone, and I

caught myself before chasing it,
knowing all about the undertow

and the importance of the breachway.
There I stood with the other

looped onto my pinkie finger.
I closed my fist.

Ask me if I can speak
of balance, loss, and distance.

I’ve hobbled forty years
in a single sandal.

Forty—the root for quarantine,
the weeks for full-term pregnancy,

the length of fasting in the wilderness,
of temptation by devils, floods

and wandering in deserts.
Forty years before I pulled the saved one off,

and, finally waltzing barefoot, tossed
it to the undertow and currents.

D. Walsh Gilbert is a thirty-year breast cancer survivor. She serves on the board of the non-profit, Riverwood Poetry Series, focusing poetry against hatred, and as co-editor of the Connecticut River Review. She lives in a rural setting in Connecticut with her husband and two old dogs.