Practically falling out of our
buskins, we all come home
eventually. One way or
another, we arrive, to see
all we’ve loved and lost
hanging over us, from a
heaven we thought we wanted.

In high school I wore
buskin-like sandals
that resembled boots
worn in ancient Greece,
and it wasn’t long before
they earned the name
Jerusalem cruisers.

And in the movie Gladiator
the main character, a
famous war general of
Rome, escapes his captors
and returns home to find
his wife and buskin-wearing
son hanging above him.

What point is there to life
now that what was most
loved is dead? What else is
there to do than live a
crucified life drenched in the
soot of tragedy, like a man
already dead and dressed
in tattered robes and buskins?
he thinks.

But he doesn’t know yet
he can live for his dead wife
and son by freeing another
boot-stomping son who’ll
eventually watch over his
own son.

Buskin wearing or not,
the son will learn to love
people so much, they’ll flock
to him like birds, where they’ll
balance all day on his supple
shoulders and pull string
from his shirt for their nests,
while they chirp something
that sounds like buskin.