The old man
wears a leather brown apron.
His eyebrows
are long and whitened. The wooden bench
is frayed,
its surface nibbled away
by mallet
blows. He rolls the bent and
ailing shoes
on the counter, cradles them away
to a place
among the sagging, laden shelves. The
hordes of
obsolete footwear, a familiar
wallpaper.
He chalks large numbers
on the soles
or inside. His customers
have come to
learn patience
as he
struggles to locate their goods.
Eventually,
he does. To tell the truth,
his work is
less and less precise
these days.
As you examine your shoe
the nails
seem big, the soles too thick.
But, as he points
out (using a thick hairy finger),
only brute
force will separate the new sole
from the
upper. The paint-on-wood sign
(Boot and
Shoe Repairs) withers and curls like old bark.
He doesn’t
talk much, and soon
he is back
leaning over the last,
bearing the
side of his face to you.
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