Through The Looking Glasses

Through The Looking Glasses

Vanitas Selfie and Poem

Mizunos

At the break of dawn they linger
Like pinched lions, hushed with hunger,
Anticipation as their pillar,
Sore soles as their prey.

Open and waiting, they purr to me to pick them up,
To bend my bones, bend their tongues
And bind their laces tight around my feet,
Leading me out, from carpet to concrete.

Once stiff and sleek, now worn and weary,
They are the ultimate protectors of what fills them,
Their engines of muscle, their sinew and bone.
Separated, one is but an empty vessel,
The other a barren home.

They are armor, they are cases,
They are cans, they are vases,
Ships and guides, vaults and robes.
But metaphor stops short,
Because they are solely shoes,

On my feet and on the ground.
Made, bought, sold, used, and ignored:
They are themselves, the same as their laces,
The same as the rubber,
Defined together, defined apart, they are what they are.

Ben Keffer

2/6/14