Best Effort

No, these are not my feet.

Sweeping 12x12 tiles throughout a house
that in India might shelter four times the people,
regular long-handled instrument with plastic bristles
instead of the stubby grass or coconut brooms
I used there. In that foreign land, even sweeping
requires a certain humility.
Unless you stoop down low and
really see the floor, how can you tell
when it's clean? 
And it isn't, not this one here and now,
for all its attractive design and color.
I've swept today, mopped recently, it looks just fine! 
Deception's afoot, quite literally.
If you saw my soles, you'd see the evidence:
Dirt! Despite best effort, it remains, 
multiplied two thousand times and more,
throughout a house of lies. 
And if you could look into my soul?
Plenty there as well. 



(c) Ellen Gillette, 2012