Barefoot
by Leonard Kress
When I was younger, I was always leaving my shoes
behind, always, though, with a good excuse.
One time, the March on Washington to protest
the bombing of Cambodia, Kent State, after settling down
for the night in a church loft, awakened
from sleep to romp on the Capitol lawn to play hide
and seek by the Doric columns, someone had hidden
my things. For the entire weekend I went shoe-
less. The grassy mall, Joan Baez—we had awakened
the planet’s consciousness, it seemed, the Pentagon had no excuse
not to implode, its walls tumbling down,
its frayed-suit denizens joining the earnest frolic in protest
of themselves and their deeds. An idea they’d surely protest.
It happened so often my soles resembled hides,
thick, calloused, impenetrable. So it was easy to amble down
the chunk gravel path by the Wissahicken without shoes,
side-stepping horseshit with friends, excused
from their lack of hardiness, though clearly awake
to the chance I might be onto something, in the wake
of others who’d gone barefoot before. They don’t protest
as we pay homage to Chief Tedyuscung’s statue, poor excuse
for heroic sculpture, the last of his tribe, nowhere to hide,
gazing west and chiseled naked, not even shoes
for protection―from smashed beer bottles flung down
from the summit. Once when I felt the need to calm down
ready for some sort of awakening
I found a huge zazen session, removed my shoes
and entered the campus gym, ignoring protesting
locked-out gymnasts. I tried to hide
The fire blazing in my knees, having to excuse
myself, barefoot again, for what seemed an excuse
of a counseling session. Winter was bearing down,
and the smug, bored psychologist could not hide
her diagnosis. When YAHWEH woke
up Moses to propose his mission, wary Moses protested,
but still approached sacred ground, removing first his shoes.
Leonard Kress published poetry and fiction in Missouri Review, Iowa Review, American Poetry Review, Harvard Review. Recent collections: The Orpheus Complex, and Walk Like Bo Diddley. Living in the Candy Store and Other Poems and his translation of the Polish Romantic epic, Pan Tadeusz by Adam Mickiewicz published in 2018.