PAD Day 1: Feet, Do Your Stuff!

 Today's dual prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write an "F" poem (the title starts with F and is about something that starts with F, and (2) write a prose poem about the body or part of the body, but include an encounter between two people, some spoken language, and at least one "crisp visual image." So here is mine, which was partly inspired by the silly lyric in the epigraph. I had fun with this.

Feet
 
You need feet to stand up straight with,
You need feet to kick your friends,
You need feet to keep your socks up,
And stop your legs from fraying at the ends.
―Bernard Bresslaw
 
They do me a great service, getting me from here to there, so I try not to misuse them ―
I keep one out of the grave and the other out of my mouth, but I can't help myself 

when I dance and they both turn left.

 
I take good care of them, and every six months we go to the podiatrist. They love him―
they enter the office with heels wagging, and come home feeling trimmed and groomed,
filed and feisty, ready to take on a marathon.
 
One day while walking my neighborhood, I encounter a friend who exclaims,
"Look at those gunboats!"
"Where?" I ask. She looks down.
"Your shoes, your feet. I never realized how big they were!"
I am embarrassed, and want to kick her. But I don't. She is right.
Each foot measures a foot.
 
Instead, I take these vessels on a mission, each with a proud crew of five crowded up
near the bow, loading artillery to fire right through the shoe, obliterating everything
in their path―rocks, branches, a buckled slab of sidewalk, so I'll never have to trip again.