Shoestring

By Mary E. Adair

A shoestring can dangle
Just enough
To trip and hurt you if
You're not tough

So double-knot them
Mom would say
Don't come home with
Skinned knees another day.

And though I'm grown now--
My shoe slips on,
There's a different shoestring
In my new dawn.

It deals with payments, budgets
To get through,
And I carefully consider
What I must do.

There's food to buy and utilities
All to pay
And some insurance, well,
Too much, I say.

Housing costs climbing higher
Things to repair
And the beauty shop for my ego,
Not just my hair.

Planning for annual costs as when
Taxes are due,
Is part wise use of the shoestring,
Part making do.

Accidents and maladies
Can shatter one
When living on a shoestring
Is how it's done.

Though regular medicine
Has its slot
It's the emergencies that
Most always do not.

Avoid financial bruises
And never bleed
By allowing exactly enough
For all I need.

Thus careful living, subsisting
One could say,
Is the way things are accomplished
The shoestring way.

©04/06/2011 Mary E. Adair