Inside Shoes
For J.
On
the last day of school, only his second last day of school ever, he wore home
his inside shoes.
Only
his second pair of inside shoes ever.
Bursting out of the school, in
an ocean of screaming and laughing that stretches back and shudders awake an
inner sleeping child.
“Now
these are my outside shoes!”
Purchased lovingly, giddily,
even reverently in the fall.
“What
a lucky boy to have two new pairs of shoes!”
One
for outside, one for in.
Over
time, the outer dirtied, scuffed torn.
Its
twin twins forgotten, the outside set battered deep into October.
Replaced
by new boots.
“He
outgrows things so quickly!”
Then
back out come the outside shoes, tentatively, once in March half of April,
permanently in May (when not substituted for rubber boots).
June,
finally.
Baseball
and soccer and bikes and outside and dirt and chasing and falling and looking
and watching and play, play, play.
Oh,
to be a boy again!
(Oh,
if he’d only stay a boy forever!)
Limping
into June, falling apart, soles glued together.
The
last day of school, then, and the Inside shoes return
Like sailors full of stories,
Stowed
safely on some foreign beach.
Kept
safe, safer even than the worrying twin!
Raised
by a foreign duke, filled full of his wisdom,
Then
set off for home.
Forgotten.
Unfamiliar, pristine, unsullied. Unknowing of nature and daylight.
And
for a second year
—twice
makes custom—
He
declares these his summer shoes.
They’ve
graduated.
We
hear, we see. We feel, we know.
Inside
shoes to mark the passing of time.
Markers
of another year that slipped us by.
Another
year older.
Shoes
to run alongside wall height charts and report cards and chapter books and food
bills and notes from girls.
We
long to push departure and return of inside shoes further and further apart
To
put one on each foot of the colossus, have him stretch the meetings of shoes
and time
Far,
far apart
Shoes
on bronze feet
Bookend
the year to infinity
