For forty minutes now
I have been contemplating
not the meaning of life or
my place in it. Rather,
I’ve been ruminating
on the enormous energy
I have expended to put on
my left shoe.

Thoroughly exhausted by
the feat of the feet, trivial task
has taken tick by tick all I had.
Beneath the veil of meditation
on what is, I shake fist I can
no longer raise, remember
fury I might have felt in
moments like

this in the other life before.
I can neither fight nor flee
and dis-ability hobbles after me.
Soon I will stand on my two feet.
But I must move slowly, and
you must accept that this is
where I am. Today, I put
both shoes on.