“Put your best foot forward
and carry no map”

Delft is easily found, point your toes
in the right direction, click your heels
three times and recite “there’s no place like home.”
The incantation of ruby slippers will take you there.
Expect to walk on reclaimed land taken from
the possessive sea who is always trying
to get it back. So step softly.

“We know the road,
its sorrows, its intentions
and the places it changed its mind”

Blue needs no instructions.
White needs no manual.
Together we make up a pair of knickknacks
standing on the shelf of an old lady who collects
salt and pepper shakers.

“We are the armor of footsteps”

Our footsteps have four points of contact
heel toe, heel toe, repetitively moving forward.
With boots on the ground, we conquer the fashion
of the times, but we are passive as loafers
quiet as moccasins, tranquil as huaraches.

“Like you, we wear out
Like you, we will not be around forever”

What happens to old clodhoppers is what happens to old feet.
They outlive their usefulness and are discarded.
No one repairs shoes these days
and good podiatrists are hard to find.

“Dance us to pieces and be glad”

Imagine the music of porcelain on the dance floor
Not boot stomping or heel stamping just the clinking
of tap dancing or a lively Irish jig.
We can be hammered from iron, cobbled from glass
carved from willow, tanned from hides, polymerized
from petrochemicals.
Even strap-, buckle – or toe- less
we march to our own wearer’s tune.