Barefoot Poem 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 shoeless. 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 on to 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.
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