Boots: a Frontline Revery

From under how many inadequate superfluous blankets on how many casualty trucks heavily loaded have how many dead soldiers’ rottentender feet sun-starved crept pale-soled into the too-late thawing air? – I wonder.   The amateur historian newsfools’ photographs will proclaim with indifferent black and white frankness that dead mean need no boots. They shall not grow old, etc nor cold in winter, nor bruised on summer’s sharp gravel but the living do, and will and must be shod before we die So: a necessary transaction. What dead men’s boots do I wear? The rough leather and split heels declare other owners, the taught-strung laces easily snapped squeak the mud, snow and baking heat of a thousand miles already walked. And so I walk. Will these boots survive me? I pledge them to no other. I curse the hand that tugs them from my day-old battle-torn corpse. My feet will not suffer the indignity. But if you must, unknown soldier, carry forward my war-weary motion and if you will be given my rifle and if you, too, will soon be killed then I entrust these immortal lifeless trudging vessels to you: wishing a speedy end to soldiers’ recycled boots.

 

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