Thirteen Ways to Look at a Person’s Shoes

I
Among all the stories
Ever told
The shoe spun the best.

II
Shoes without people
Are nothing.
Shoes with their person
Knit a tale.

III
Boots
Crunching through glazed snow,
Or shoes
Running from the ground.

IV
Shoes without her feet
Are two.
Shoes with her feet
Are one.

V
I do not know which to prefer,
The story her shoes inflect,
Or the beauty of the mud
On mine.

VI
Somewhere far off
A barefoot man
Tells his story,
While a local girl
Creates hers
And lets her shoes share it.

VII
Everyone remembers
The tale of a glass shoe,
So they desire to become
A worthy Cinderella.

VIII
I know the tales
I have been told.
I know not how
To escape my own,
For the tracks of the shoes follow me.
This I know.

IX
When the story ends
The shoes stay,
To share it evermore
In an empty state.

X
Watching the shoes
Dancing in the light
Even the greatest of artists
Would stop to watch.

XI
As Jesus wore his sandals
We wear our Birkenstocks,
Making me remember the story
Which we know through the word.
Though still and silent, his shoes
Stood present.

XII
The footprints mold the desert sand.
The shoes travel on nomadic feet.

XIII
So the boxes sit
Filled with shoes,
Merely the blank pages
Of a book
Yet to be written.