My Father's Feet

My father’s feet are not sixty-nine years old.
Somehow they are at least thirty years younger than
the rest of him.
My father’s feet have carried him
up and down the railroad tracks by our house,
through his fields of wheat and corn and hay,
along the Jordan River and the old Willow Creek,
up Bald Mountain,
across the countless dirt roads of his youth,
and the paved streets of old age.

Every morning for as long as I can remember
my father has gripped in his right hand,
an old walking stick
that he cut
from a willow in our back yard.
He takes that stick
and he follows those feet.
I am certain those feet can walk on their own,
and that they alone know the way.
My father could take that
morning walk with his eyes closed.
When he returns home,
he removes his shoes, but not his socks, and
he immediately slides those feet into a pair of brown slippers.

I have seen
my father’s bare feet
only a few times.
On top they are pale. White.
Like a ghost, a spiritual apparition.
They draw my eyes toward the ground,
haunting my thoughts,
holding me there.
Lost in their trance, I cannot look away.
Those feet are not wrinkled.
They are not shriveled or discolored.
While the rest of my father has aged,
His feet have remained untouched.
Time has simply never stooped that low.
The bottoms are pruny. Pink.
I imagine they feel just as soft, just as smooth
as they did the day he was born.
They are pure, unblemished.
Not a callous or a scar.
No warts.
They never hurt.
The skin is never dry.

My father’s feet are his most protected and prized possession.
They are what hold him to the ground.
They are his constant movement,
his road to change,
his ever-increasing steady pace.
They are the driving force behind his dark desires.
Those feet are what keep my father alive.