Page:Rootabaga Pigeons by Carl Sandburg.pdf/37

 time I went high and put my foot higher my foot slips. Somebody gave me a slipfoot. I always slip.

"So you call him Slipfoot?" asked Blixie.

"Yes," said the old man.

"Has he been here before?"

"Yes, he was here a year ago, saying, 'I marry a woman and she runs away. I run after her—and my foot slips. I always get what I want—and then my foot slips.

"I ran up a stairway to the moon one night. I shoveled a big sack full of little gold beans, little gold bricks, little gold bugs, on the moon and I ran down the stairway from the moon. On the last step of the stairway, my foot slips—and all the little gold beans, all the little gold bricks, all the little gold bugs, spill out and spill away. When I get down the stairway I am holding the sack and the sack holds nothing. I am all right always till my foot slips.

"I jump on a trapeze and I go swinging,