ODE ON ABANDONED FOOTWEAR


Old Cowboy Boot in the snow, where did your partner go?
If it's any consolation I doubt your fraternal twin is getting very far without you.

Your leather pouts now,
but I imagine in its heyday sashaying in a country line dance
thinking this day would never come,
this set would never sun alone...
Perhaps you're pining for the times your owner would discard his articles
but keep you both on secretly, under the covers
for traction when he took a lover...

How can anyone help but digress when we spot such sole-mates divided?

They sneak into our everyday visual landscape like pedestrian yetis,
seen and unseen, spotting the globe.
I once trotted and plotted them as such,
hot on a trail of flip-flop, slipper, moccasin, ugg, shootie boot, puerto rican fence climber,
oxford, welly, stiletto, zapato, chausson, and on, and on...

Until I recognized the familial silhouette of my Uncle on vacation in Israel
crouched along a stretch of the Dead Sea,
photographing a deserted sandal.
We wondered together whether the foot that inhabited this fine shoe
had had the misfortune of being swallowed
by one of the notorious Dead Sea Sinkholes...
30 feet down seems impossibly deep,
lower than the Earth's lowest elevation.

How could we help but digress?

So now I dress my feet and start walking.
Look how playful these two move together,
gabbing in their garb!
I"m on the hunt again,
and I'm wondering,
how many solitary shoes are between you and I, tonight?