Footwear

NB work in progress

 

Atom by atom

(Only, millions at a time)

These shoes have shucked

Their baby grains of gum

Along the paths

We daily drove together.

 

They’re not exactly trainers

(Though starting to smell like it!)

Or runners, or gym, or tennis shoes,

Though you might fake a game or two.

Soft suede, beige, stitched with panels

And logostyles, with long white laces

You have to double-knot, or trip.

I guess you’d call them kindly, a sport shoe,

Which at my time of life

Is a bit, whatever the word is.

Comfy? Wearable will suffice.

 

As the rubber

Dissolves away

Their trail

Lengthens

Like the shadows

On Court Number One.

 

I’ve been worried lately

Feeling the ground, the grit

Pressing rough against my feet.

So today it came as no surprise

When, for the first time,

I feel my finger go right through

The sole, worn thin as rain

And think, that’s it then.

Game over for these shoes. Again.

 

We wear away,

Faintly

Inexorably

Along the line of life.

Cell by indivisible cell,

Millions at a time.

 

And as we wear away, the world wears too

And trails its mark upon us, its faint sheen.

But the world’s wearing will not fix my shoes,

Nor in a million years will my shoes repair the world.

Gradually, or speedily these shoes, the world

The whole shebang, shucks off its rot,

Exhausted energy painting slugtrails you can find

On cycle paths through Time, the Universe,

This disintegrating Mind.