for Miguel <br /> <br />It would be neat if with the New Year <br />I could leave my loneliness behind with the old year. <br />My leathery loneliness an old pair of work boots <br />my dog vigorously head-shakes back and forth in its jaws, <br />chews on for hours every day in my front yard— <br />rain, sun, snow, or wind <br />in bare feet, pondering my poem, <br />I’d look out my window and see that dirty pair of boots in the yard. <br /> <br />But my happiness depends so much on wearing those boots. <br /> <br />At the end of my day <br />while I’m in a chair listening to a Mexican corrido <br />I stare at my boots appreciating: <br />all the wrong roads we’ve taken, all the drug and whiskey houses <br />we’ve visited, and as the Mexican singer wails his pain, <br />I smile at my boots, understanding every note in his voice, <br />and strangers, when they see my boots rocking back and forth on my <br /> feet <br />keeping beat to the song, see how <br />my boots are scuffed, tooth-marked, worn-soled. <br /> <br />I keep wearing them because they fit so good <br />and I need them, especially when I love so hard, <br />where I go up those boulder strewn trails, <br />where flowers crack rocks in their defiant love for the light.<br /><br />Jimmy Santiago Baca<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/it-would-be-neat-if-with-the-new-year/
