Thinking, again, of the image of myself looking back at my grandparents home upon leaving and recognizing that they must feel similarly, I recalled a bit of free-verse I wrote a couple of years ago.

Witnesses

On the bottom of his closet, like two soldiers they stood

A layer of dust demanded “You’ve seen these before”.

Witnesses for what he now couldn’t and once could

When he bought them.

Was it nineteen sixty four?

One at a time, he picked each up, turned it around,

“Look! The pattern on the toes is just the same,

The leather’s still good, the color still brown,

And inside

The author hadn’t changed his name."

Yet they spoke of different times and of a different man

Who wore them then more than a quarter century ago.

These shoes were now witnesses to god’s sinister plan,

That from vibrant forms,

Takes man and transforms him to Lore.

H. Covitz 10 July 1994

I think the wingtips must still be there in the closet.