Boots

Abstract

"Boots" is a lyrical, narrative poem from the perspective of a Maine Coon Cat rescued one winter by a boy, Johnny, who grows up to be a young man enlisting in the service. Johnny comes back wounded in many ways, one of them being an amputee with phantom limb syndrome. Boots tries to help his owner as best he can by scratching the prosthetic leg that seems to pain Johnny so, and ponders the winters long ago when they used to play in the snow together. After our global campaign against COVID, I couldn't help but feel the poem had a renewed sense of meaning to many of the walking wounded who served their communities in the face of COVID. So it is a poem I hope in memorial to veterans of wars military and medical.