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O lone boot of canvas, thou tortured sole
tends silently still to duty, lace-cinched
tongue, bloody, upright in thou blackened hole.

O dissevered boot, sandy brown and red
smoking beacon of tragic misstepping,
yet bound still to master, though master’s dead

two-dozen feet over, spilled at the gut,
caromed by landmines, thereby bequeathing
thou cradled charge macabre: thou tenant foot.

O silhouetted homestead upon crater’s rim,
thou haunt from angles of prone not supine,
thou ghostly hearth smokes a phantom limb

in the failing sunlight, taunting my pokes,
my crawling, sword tilling in sand and rock
to clear safe passage—not towards poor Stokes,

but thou—O cruel desert boot, thou distance strangles.
O grim solitary boot, thou garden mangles.