People Getting Divorced

By Lawrence Ferlinghetti b. 1919 Lawrence Ferlinghetti

People getting divorced

riding around with their clothes in the car

and wondering what happened

to everyone and everything

including their other

pair of shoes

And if you spy one

then who knows what happened

to the other

with tongue alack

and years later not even knowing

if the other ever

found a mate

without splitting the seams

or remained intact

unlaced

and the sole

ah the soul

a curious conception

hanging on somehow

to walk again

in the free air

once the heel

has been replaced

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, “People Getting Divorced” from Endless Life: Selected Poems. Copyright © 1976 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Reprinted with the permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation, www.wwnorton.com/nd/welcome.htm.

Source: These Are My Rivers: New and Selected Poems (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1993)

Biography

As poet, playwright, publisher, and activist, Lawrence Ferlinghetti helped to spark the San Francisco literary renaissance of the 1950s and the subsequent “Beat” movement. Like the Beats, Ferlinghetti felt strongly that art should be accessible to all people, not just a handful of highly educated intellectuals. His career has been marked by its constant challenge of the status quo; his poetry engages readers, defies popular . . .

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