Two Poems

Boots

He pulls the right one
off, its lace made in some
Vietnamese sweatshop,

fourteen eyelets though he uses only
six, and 200 joule impact
for the steel toecaps,

which must be good he thought
when he saw them years ago
in the Army & Navy, guessing

what it meant, but you don’t find those shops
so often now,
and yes they’re cracked but not

split and the tongue is
seawater bleached
from those places he walks,

the margins, over limestone
...