Because I can walk over hot coals,
because I can make doctors turn green
and shoe salesmen avert their eyes,
because I have added yet another use
to the hundred and one uses of Old Dutch Cleanser;
because they tell me the secrets of miners and small boys,
because they keep me in good standing and continual grace
in the ashes and dust of the last rites,
because they carry my great bulk without complaint,
because they don’t smell;
because it’s taken me years to
grow my own shoes, like the quaint signatures of truth,
because they are hard and gentle as lion’s pads,
pard’s paw, mule’s hoof and cock’s toes,
because they can’t make poems or arguments
but speak in an aching tongue or not at all
and come home at night encrusted with stones,
calluses, grass, all that the head forgets
and the foot knows.