Distant Footfalls

How present this past called memory.

Tired soul dragging hobnail boots
caked with crud, mud and oil returns home.

From atop the landing…

 
"Drop them greasy clothes, Leo!"
came the sometimes-loving voice,
the sometimes-malevolent voice,
but always a wife's warning,
my mother's caring way.

So many years past…

 
When linoleum's impoverished sound
is so remembered,
the stepping from stove to table,
her laboring hands hefting the pressure cooker
laden with steam-softened cracked wheat, barely eatable,
the day's nourishment weighing upon forever toiling legs
cushioned by deerskin slippers whispering their shuffled dedication …
“I care.”

Generously ladled, chew-your-brain-loose grains,
fit for health, unfit for a kid,  
layered my stomach, fortified my heart,
prepped my brain early on for gathering a mother’s mission for my gathering

of today’s reverie, so dear.

Then…

There was the sound so ethereal,
heavenly, I was told by Mother,
her bare feet curling the once-a-day-vacuumed
pride and joy carpet of sage green shag,
replacing recently vanquished throw-rug-jigsaw-mess,
that my early youth played upon as my castle-place domain.

Scrunching pleasures…

 
Mother and Dad’s toes lapped up that carpet.
Dad's feet, awful specimens of calloused-hard-years of labor,

Mother's feet preserved with nightly Epson-Salt-soaks,
when we could afford it,

yet digits worthy of pedicure, never afforded.

Me?

Always wore my socks, heavy wool,

darned with mixed colors when worn spots yelled loud enough,
yet always comfy, homey, loving covers for footsteps
unaware of the journey ahead,
where steps would have to become strides, leaps, bounds,

and eventually… battle the idleness of age.

So present these footfalls of then,

becoming echoes foreshadowing paces to come,

as a once stubborn kid needs to listen carefully,

or miss faraway footfalls still echoing beside him,

still rich in lessons, often in stealth mode,

but always there for the conscious.