Soul Over Lightning: Poems

Max Jacob’s Shoes

| 60 Max Jacob’s Shoes They were found after his death by someone who needed shoes. When this man plucked them out of a mountain of trash, Max Jacob’s shoes came alive. They fit this person as if truth had never left and he slowly walked away from the filth. It took him days to realize he wore the shoes of a poet. The black shoelaces talked to him in his sleep, the poems drifting beyond the man’s bed to recite themselves into being. Jacob’s black shoes glistened as if they were shined yesterday, the sleepy man looking over the edge of his bed as the talking shoes tapped a message that said a man who wears someone else’s shoes is a man who knows how to get along in life. When he put them on at dawn, the shoes quit reciting poetry and led the man to a church Jacob never entered. The new owner of the shoes went into a church for the first time in thirty years, the shoes echoing across the sanctuary where a priest waited, sensing Jewish shoes. After the stranger revealed his sins to the priest, he emerged from the confessional and looked down 61 | at his bare feet. He went back to the tiny chamber, but Jacob’s shoes were gone, their disappearance casting a steady light on the barefoot man, the helpless priest, even the two mice in the sanctuary that revealed themselves to no one as they gnawed on the twisted shoelaces. ...