humans were made to run barefoot.

we were made to climb mountains, fighting gravity
and to fly across stony deserts and dangerous forests.

we were not made for these,
these bastardizations of heels and soles and
    skin.

humans were made to run barefoot,
because
we were always meant to leave traces of ourselves
on everything we touched, every inch
of the world that we would walk.

we were always meant to take with us
the scars left by the walls we would climb,
the bruises left by the falls we would take,
the hard skin and the instant familiarity left
    by the paths we would forge
    alone.

so worry not.
you were never meant to feel the skin of this earth
through designer heels and combat boots.

you were only ever meant to feel the weight of yourself,
a breathing, bleeding, human
charged with electric emotions and spinning
out of control
    upon the ground,
meant to break yourself on the roads you paved
and the dreams you wrought in stone.

but tread carefully.

sometimes you will step on glass,
and sometimes you will step on hearts.
and so always, you will walk in blood.

make your footprints matter.

What God has put asunder, I have joined together.
He chuckles at this somewhat self-consciously,
His clientele comprised primarily of gentlemen of a certain age,
Most of whom have stepped off to the altar
Twice or thrice, some even more,
Whose wives will be, at least pro tem,
The mistresses of the Moorish bastardizations
Being commissioned by their husbands,
Vaguely Iberian grotesqueries
Christened Sin Cuidado and Villa Tranquilla
Festooned with cornucopias of cornices and cupolas,
Featuring vaulted cathedral ceilings and open-prairie floor plans,
Impossible to cool in the ninety-degree dawn of August
Or heat during the all too frequent cold snaps,
(Such being noted to him by a visitor
From a staid Boston architectural firm,
To which he replied, Save that for the classrooms, pal.
I give the people what they want, dad,
And these folks are first, last, and forever
All about the façade.)

It is not, however, his effort to turn Florida’s East Coast
Into a giant movie set for the stories of Don Juan or El Cid
Which inspires him to utter his inversion of the marital vow.
He has moved beyond being a mere designer;
He is a man of substance, a builder in the larger, cosmic sense,
And so he is here, in this sticky, sweltering venue
Which disappointed Spaniards named after a rat’s oral cavity,
To make a new Venice, complete with electric gondolas,
Cloisters which would put any in the Old World to shame,
Gesturing, bellowing, and cajoling,
A Prospero of sawhorses and steam shovels,
As displaced Seminoles and colored laborers
Sweat and swear and stumble
As they dredge swamps and hack down stumpy mangroves
In the service of his vision, the aggrandizement of his bottom line,
Arm-twisting the caprices of drought and hurricane
To serve the pricier whims
Of a gaggle of DuPonts and Wanamakers.
It’s not that I don’t believe in a higher power, he will demur,
I’m simply not averse to some slight enhancement of His plans.