shoes

you have too many shoes.
brown, black,
loafers, tie ups,
and wing tips.
tennis shoes, basketball
shoes.
some new, some old,
some never worn
the soles still
clean, hardly out
of the box. dress shoes
for a wedding
or funeral.
you understand this shoe
thing.
even the sandals,
even the slippers.
you can't have enough
shoes, remembering those
early years
of patching the one
pair that you owned,
slipping cardboard
into the bottom where
the round hole grew.