Marge's Shoes

The first few years she wore them

I didn't even notice the leather's soft tan,

and the buckskin laces roughly looped.

By the time I paid attention, her feet

had already curved the shoes inward,

weather had toughened the soft leather,

and one lace had broken short.

Then I asked where she got those shoes

and she said from the Indian store

down in Mountain View.

Some other time, another year, I asked

the name of the Indian store

that sold handmade shoes like hers,

but she said it went out of business

and no store sold mocs with vodka

splatters and Yosemite dirt ground in

with a little tamale pie, so I couldn't

buy shoes like hers anyway.

Last summer, laughing and crying

together, in the campground

at Lake Mendocino, on the night

before her youngest son's wedding

while the men drank beer and talked

of politics and sports,

I told her how much I really, really liked

those old shoes of hers. So

she took them off and gave them to me.

Those beat-up, raggedy Kaibab moccasins

I wear are stained and worn rough

by hard years in my friend's life.

I wear them when I need her courage.

Copyright Credit: Poem copyright ©2013 by Sylvia Ross, “Marge's Shoes,” from Red Indian Road West: Native American Poetry from California, (Scarlet Tanager Press, 2016). Poem reprinted by permission of Sylvia Ross and the publisher.