*HINT: This poem is not about shoes.
My shoes no longer trust my feet to guide their lives.
They crave autonomy from my ambulatory mind.
In the beginning, they were quite content
to be tied to my body by the strings of will
threaded through the eyelets of convenience.
My right shoe, dreaming it was a polished wing-tip,
behaved as if superior, a step above the left,
the king of cliches, the sovereign of superlatives.
greatest, biggest, richest, smartest, mostest, best.
The haughty right shoe looked down upon the left.
My right shoe declared its independence.
deserted me, abandoned his collaborator,
and went his way into the mall of the world.
Without my feet, neither shoe had a unifying purpose.
Without each other their animosity became loneliness.
On their own, there were no checks or balances,
no limit to how far they go, or discussion of why.
They no longer practiced the art of compromise.
They hurt each other with whip-leather tongues.
They would be miserable,
loose strings dragged through wet grass,
scrapped along cement sidewalks.
Both would be scuffed with no one to polish them.
Low to the immediate ground, everything was
next or now. No long range plans, no platform.
Neither shoe could benefit from elevation,
from a broader perspective that accompanies height,
that comes from another’s point of view, or two.
My socks are torn. My feet are bruised and cold.
I want my shoes back, unruly as they are.
The three of us, walker, shoe and shoe,
will do our best to govern as we bobble down the road.
In governing,
better is always improving the best.