Mailbox

My mailbox stands on the opposite side of the street.  I don't know that I've ever gone to get the mail while wearing shoes.  I'm always reminded of the poem, The Young Housewife, by William Carlos Williams, who comes to the curb "shy, uncorseted, tucking in/ stray ends of hair" to summon the ice-man and the fish-man.  I feel like that as I pad along the soft tar lines to the mailbox, in my pajama shorts and wispy hair and bare brown feet and return clutching the mail to my chest, a little exposed, but mostly free.  In summer I go slowly, in the fall I bow my head in the rain.  Spring brings an uncharacteristic mincing step, and in winter I just bolt.  But always shoeless, uncorseted, and free.