Selection

     by Susan Stevens



The search for these boots seemed to her
the very best analogue for fitting up with a person:
She waited, analyzed, tried them on, felt their strength,
their flex, and gauged their extravagance—
something for the long hike, the arduous climb.
But more than this, they meant the trip, the distance
she had never gone. The boots, the passage; one invoked
the other. When they were hers, she put them on
and the trip was displayed. She wore them
to conjure the length and breadth of the journey.
On the shelf, the boots lured her thinking
to outposts, to wilderness and discipline and loving
the same man for journeys she believed
would outlast the boots.