Leather Boots

A Seamus Heaney pastiche

Every year when Persephone

returned from the Underworld,

My mother would take me

to fit my ever growing feet

 

into a new pair

of shiny boots.

When we reached

the old O'Hara's bridge,

 

I would sprint across,

expecting the creatures

of fairy stories to

leap out,

 

Leap out

and gobble me up,

from the rotting bogs

of blackened eyes.

 

The smell of the shoe store

was always the fearful odour

of the bridge trolls

following me.

 

Now when I smell

that fresh

musty tang

of new leather,

 

Glimpses of

the bridge trolls appear,

bringing with them

reminders of past terrors.