The Homeless Pair Of Shoes

[Quantareau]

THE HOMELESS PAIR OF SHOES


I bought the forest long ago
So I could find a place
To sit beneath a shady tree
And write at my own pace

I found my tree and sat right down
But someone else was there
And looking closer at his face
I saw he was a bear

A thousand pardons, Sir, I said
I did not see you here
Though my departure is in haste,
It is not out of fear

I only want to be alone
To write a few good lines
I do not wish to share them with
A bear or mountain lion

My pardon was accepted and
I fled in swift retreat
Not doubting once, that grizzly bear
Could have me for a treat.

I bought a meadow in the sun
To find a place to play
To sing and dance among the beams
Of moon and sun all day

And here I found a quiet place
Of peace and solitude
Some hippies in a commune and
A dirty homeless dude.

No pardons offered, this was mine
My name was on the deed
No Sir, we will not leave they said
This place is all we need.
 
The homeless dude just looked at me
As if I were not there
He found his box and settled in
And met my icy stare

And as I turned to walk away
The echoes of the night
Told me the hippies sang till dawn
The homeless died of fright

I bought a cabin by a stream
To find some solace there
That I might find some meaning in
The hippies and the bear.

I listened to the hooting owl
The blue bird and a dove
I wondered if the homeless man
Had gone to God above.

The owl learned of my quandaries and
He didn't give a hoot
His tongue was silent from then on
And mocked my words to boot

The dove was called away to war
And I was left to muse
The reason that the homeless man
Bequeathed to me his shoes

The cabins void haunted me
And teased my fears at night
I bade farewell and shut the door
And left at mornings light

I bought a stone on which to sit
And pass my time in thought
Deciding which adventure was
And which was simply not
 
The rock begrudged the hour I spent
Upon it's back in rhyme
And thus petitioned natures bar
For damages and time

Now I was homeless but I had
A homeless pair of shoes
To walk with me that country mile
With nothing left to lose.

I found the Hippies doing well
From meadows in the sun
I found some peace and solitude
The homeless dude had won

I found the bear still sitting there
He didn't have a home
It seemed to me he didn't mind
The Earth was his to roam.

I left him there inside the shade
Beneath that old oak tree
I didn't want to wake him up
And risk him eating me

I left the forest and the trees
I left the cabin bare
I left the meadow in the sun
With all the Hippies there

I gave back to the homeless dude
His old black pair of shoes
I knew that I could write the words
I'd paid the utmost dues

I'd bought the forest and the trees
The meadow in the sun
I gave them all back to the Earth
My freedom I had won
 
I bought the cabin by the stream
A lonely looking stone
Forced out by Mother Nature when
Her heart I tried to own.

I understood the hippies and
I understood the bear
I understood the homeless dude
Someone had buried there

I understood the silence of
The owl and vacant dove
I understood the forest and
The white clouds high above.

I laid myself against the breast
Of Mother Natures Earth
And cried as if some infant from
A Natural rebirth

And Mother Nature touched my heart
And brought me to the light
And showed me through her eyes that all
Her Queendom was alright.

The hippies turned unto the bare
The bear into a rug
The homeless dude pushed up a rose
And fed a homeless bug

Yes, Nature would be quite all right
The rivers all will flow
Despite My help or hindrance
The Trees will all still grow.

New bears will come and make new rugs
New homeless dudes will die
New idiots will learn the truth
And laugh to death or cry


And all because I wanted to
Sit down and write in peace
At best I found that all we have
From Nature is a lease.

So let this be a lesson if
It’s forests that you buy
The hippies dance, the bears still eat
The homeless dudes still die.

And what you get from all of this
And this you cannot choose,
Is from the next dead homeless dude
A homeless pair of shoes.

[NowInBuda]

Hello Quantareau - I must say, I love this.

I'll start with maybe a little bit about the form. I felt like a train reading it: knowing the familiar plodding of the continuous thumping of the tracks, getting used to the chugging rhythms, and having a vague idea of the destination. And then, simply leaning back and enjoyed the ride simply for the ride's sake.

Still, too, I couldn't say what the destination would really look like until I got there. So I really do think that this steady cadence and your enlightenment story-in-poem plotline made a good pair.

It reminded me of these classic American poets who seek answers to life and death and God and doom somewhere on the straddling line between society and nature. I think you know what I mean: the cabin, the fields, the communes - its all a matter of finding a place that fits to the attitude of one's dreams. Likewise, I kept thinking about, say, William Wordsworth sitting on a mossy stone in the woods to meditate on the nature of Nature and preaching to his peers to throw away all books and idle strife. I doubt that he ever ran into a bear or hippies in England, though, so it is interesting to see that same impulse that he had applied to a more brazenly realistic circumstance.
That's an idea I'm more familiar with, but like how here you venerated that idea and parodied it at the same time. The "tone" of your stanzas hops back and forth between seriousness and borderline-nonsense in a way that makes both of those extremes seem worthy of contemplating and re-evaluating. That, I suppose, accounts for why I was drawn to reading on and on, and seeing the story through to its end.

I'm sorry I can't be much more help; I'm by no means a helpful poetry critic, I just wanted to give my impressions. I would be interested, actually, to take a look at other poems you have written, either in this tone more serious tones, to how your ideas about these things might round out in a different shape of verse.

In any case, thanks for the read!

[NowInBuda]

I'll add something a bit more, after a re-reading: the symbolism of the homeless shoes seems to work very ironic (in a good way).
Whereas your narrator seeks nature, and answers in nature, it becomes clear that the untouched "peace" of the wilderness is an ideal that is not easily reconciled with the necessities of living with society and man-influenced things. So to place the hippies and the homeless man as constituents of "nature" seems something like a sober defeat of the romantic ideal that the narrator was looking for. Shoes, for one thing, are a man-made tool; a homeless man's shoes, to me, conjure up some pretty sour images - the utmost sorrows the civilised society, and a stark estrangement from nature. Perhaps because the term "homeless" in today's world suggests the non-ownership of a constructed house.
But, still, because the narrator achieves some degree of peace at the end, this rather nasty central image wants to be accounted for. I take it that the poet realizes an acceptable middle ground between his dreams of acquiring nature, and being simply a component of nature, along with all the other human and non-human components of nature. The shoes, I take it, are realized as being innocent and peaceful by their association with humans: just as humans are nature's creation, shoes are human's creation, so it is all a sort of stream of mutual reliance. In this way, maybe the narrator comes to realize a quality of beauty in the hippies, the homeless man, the homeless man's inevitable death and burial in nature's bosom, and even the shoes which carry on this legacy and remind the narrator of his realizations.
What I find a bit difficult to grapple with, though, is the fact that the nasty associations and imagery of the phrase "homeless man's shoes" is never necessarily addresses, and seems to remain until the end of the poem. That is, there is no description of the shoes, or the way the way the narrator chooses to employ those relics other than as component of his imparted lesson.

So I guess, despite the optimistic conclusion of the piece, there is a tinge of unease, or of being not-entirely resolved. That makes the poem stronger, in my opinion.

The narrator may still have a road to walk unto his path to enlightenment, I reckon...maybe that's a fair occupation for those shoes? (sorry for being cliché; I could not resist) :P

[Quantareau]

Thanks NowInBuda, "Stay tuned" I will post more, maybe something a little shorter to give you eyes a rest. I have three others posted here you might enjoy. I'm really pleased for your thoughts. I wish there were time and space here to tell you the circumstances how it came to be written. Again, thank you so much. "The narrator may still have a road to walk unto his path to enlightenment, I reckon...maybe that's a fair occupation for those shoes? (sorry for being cliché; I could not resist) :P" Someday you may come to underestand how uncanny these two lines are.