Old Boots

 

When they have kept feet dry and warm,
protecting them from stones and thorns
and other kinds of harm, on rugged climbs
and long-forgotten walks, boots take on
ancillary lives, actors in supporting roles.

So it seems churlish to consign them
to the common garbage-tip, with empty cans
and bottles - vessels not remotely meaningful.
Nor do they qualify for burial.

But like old friends, they seem forlorn
when you move on to greener pastures,
waiting by the door, ignored, unmourned,
collecting idle dust.

When we fled the metropolis,
you left our old boots by the door
at Saint Demetrios, the church
that dwarfed the grimy concrete square.

They vanished: whether to less fortunate
but grateful wearers' feet, or banished
by the concierge to skips with rotting
kitchen scraps - bulimic symptoms
of a city's epic waste-disposal crisis -
mattered little, next to sheer survival.

One could conjecture endlessly
about extended fictive lives
our cast-off boots may well have led,
and what divergent paths they trod.
It strikes me forcibly, instead,
what baggage rides the carousel,
what humble details memory
sometimes scavenges…