Friday, March 23, 2007

Years of Walking

After years of walking
where do shoes' soles go

Every memory with you
is in those stepped-out soles

I walk as well barefooted
I wonder why either I needed

You are as absent as my soles
though I wish to save my shoes

I could hang them on the wall
or on my closet floor clear a space

I will never again tie a knot
or slide my feet in those shoes

After years of walking
where did you go




Ok. So there's something this poem isn't doing. It's not going over the edge. Is the beginning too much/little? Is it boarding the sappy? Is "soles" drawing too much attention to "souls"? Is "stepped-out" the right modifier? What about "worn-down"? What about line 6. It sounds right, but is the inversion a problem here? A distraction? What is this poem trying to do? It's trying to parallel shoe soles with a lover who has walked out the door, right? But what doesn't come across is that the soles slowly disappear? Or does it? But where do those bits of missing soles go? There's no observable trace of the missing soles. You can look at the bottom of your shoe and see it worn down. But where are those pieces? Is there a trade going on? The shoes leave a little bit of themselves wherever they roam, and the wherever gives you back a memory?

I'm not sure if I can even nail down what this poem wants to do, but I intuit something significant is happening — but it's just not leaping over the edge of experience into profundity.

No comments: