Best Pair

We walked with you on the old roads that time forgot to forget

As a welcome barrier

Feel the true world?

Its sharp edges, its prickly hedges?

Never

We sheltered you like a new born lamb

And gave you time to grow a callous badge

In our nursery of impact and chafe

You were, once, but a waif, but we stood by you

Beneath as a cloud.

And you drowned us

A baptism, not of fire

But dust, in pursuit of lust

Your actions drove

Each step.

And after summer rain sprained the ground

Drained no more your ill kept lanes

I was as a whale, of sorts, that sang in the sonorous dip

of each trip in and out as the base was tested.

Rested, as the sun baked the ridges of our under belly

This a humble make shift Welly, was as a crocodilian turned

A slumber in the rising sun

that replaced the cooling moon that rose too soon

In winter.

No splinter, or nail, driven in in the barmy hail

Did threaten you.

No one my child, that I did enround, would gain access to you.

And even when after friction had made me as unreal as fiction

I served my king in spring when the lane was sided by the green

Of the whirled stems that hemmed

the rows of dandelion seed carried on the breeze.

And when a fibrous horizon of sorts was formed

By the deformed warped sheaf that thinned

As age took its toll on me

You did not breach me through the toe

Each toe in row was contempt to sleep like

Bears in care of the growing cold.

Too good a fit like the loyal servant

That met the fate of his master.

Toes rubbed entombed in plaster

See me reflected in the glass like

Ruby flint Mirror of that red burned skin

 that glosses like a well kept car.

Afar are we the loyal dropper

That took every step,

 We faltered.

And you can just replace me.

But you will feel me again-

Each grain, in the fresh rub

Walks by next years shrubs, and mini lakes

As you bless the new

But I was once.

I kept you safe and right

Comfort was my gift to you

And the likes of mine will never walk again

Invicerated right up to the hem

A worn and torn old man

You will be like us

Not today

A throwaway

Not today

But the frayed day comes

soon.