old man’s shoes
is always the deadening give-away,
not the thinning or disappearing hair,
not the grizzly gray pallor, or the
plain, worn out, crooked warped smile,
nor the eyes so sorrowful powerful,
it’s the shoes, usually an unwanted brown,
cracked, soulless, haven’t seen new heels
since ‘no once can even hazard a guess’
add on the concerto of wholy socks too,
nah, it’s mostly shoes that carried him away,
mostly backwards, yeah, once-step forward,
and a thousand and years a way, away,
from that moment when the future passed him on its way,
to away where there was nothing left to dream of, just,
but an away, and the shine of life left his no path, ‘cept a way, away