Richard Jones
Making Shoes
It would be a good life, making shoes
in a snug workshop, cutting the leather,
shaping it over the faithful wooden last,
stitching, pounding tacks, hammering the sole,
polishing with tallow, beeswax, bone black,
buffing to a sating shine, a gratifying luster.
Imagine the sizes and styles—a tall boot for
dressage, a buckle shoe for reels or flings,
brogues for long, hard days in muddy fields.
Most of the shoes would be quite ordinary
and never leave our peaceful, rural town;
yet some would travel strange, distant roads
to Rome or Jerusalem, crossing stone bridges,
climbing secret stairs, the trusted heels ringing.
Young
Do any of us really believe
old people were ever truly young?
What a stretch of the imagination
to picture them riding horses at fifteen
through an apple orchard in the spring,
thin silver rain misting the sharp air.
Maybe the girls did swim naked in the river.
Maybe the boys did wear leather jackets.
But all we see is the frail, shambling wraith—
the hunched man or bent, arthritic woman.
As today, in the medical office lobby—
the elevator door opened to reveal a
small old woman with a cane, clearly
uncertain whether or not she’d arrived.
It took her aged body a long moment
to get going, and the impatient elevator
door began to close. My quick hand
caught it, held it open. That made her
eyes light up, as if time stood still for her.
She shambled forth, looking around
the empty lobby like a child who sees
snowflakes falling for the first time
or lightning bugs at a wood’s edge
at twilight, the small, twinkling fires
making less frightening the coming night.
Ross Belot
Sara Burant
Robert Carr
Paul Éluard
Cal Freeman
Robert Gibb
Lise Goett
Rae Gouirand
Sarah Heady
Michael Hettich
H. L. Hix
Richard Jones
Jeanine Legato
JoAnne McFarland
Fernando Molano Vargas
Mary B. Moore
Elisabeth Murawski
Miguel Murphy
Matthew Murrey
Dayna Patterson
Boyer Rickel
Zach Savich
Sloane Scott
Rebecca Seiferle
David Trinidad
César Vallejo
Ye Chun
Also by Richard Jones: "On Living," "I didn’t expect my father," "Impermanence," "Painting at Night," "Here on Planet Earth," "Selva Oscura," "The Nomenclature of Color," "The Way," "The Silver Cord," "Devotion," "Walking Meditation," "Folly," "True Country," "The Fortune-Teller," "The Study," "Subtitles," "The Trampoline," "Wisteria"
In the store: Avalon, Avalon (limited edition), "Devotion" (broadside), The Minor Key, Passport
Review: reflections on Richard Jones’ Stranger on Earth
photo: Sarah Jones