Brogues

Each Saturday night my father lined up our eighteen 

church shoes on newspaper pages on the dining room table, 

opened his large tin of polishes, waxes, creams, and brushes,

and set to work, smiling his private smile and whistling

through the wide gap between his front teeth. I kissed him

goodnight to the scent of blacking.

He favored a shoe well-worn, patched 

and re-soled, the leather conditioned. Boxcalf, full-grain, peccary. 

Cordovan, made of connective tissue from a horse’s backside 

and come down centuries via the Spaniards of Cordoba. Galoshes, 

wingtip, monk-strap—words delivered from his lips with pleasure and fanfare. 

Like the made-up nonsense words he roared 

near nightly—as the toast burned or his barouche failed to start, 

as water rose through the basement floor or a ladder 

tipped away from the window. Brilt he would yell. 

Brilt me back. Nipchule. We always laughed, but he 

was nervous, with one malformed ankle, a limp, seven kids 

and a bad ticker. One evening he worried a hole in his pant leg 

circling and circling one fingertip. 

When I lit out alone for California, 

he stood in the driveway, holding my mother’s elbow 

and a basket of items he thought I might need. I left

most of it with him—tiny prayer book, sewing kit, a bottle 

of Lily of the Valley. 

He offered so much. I took so little. Years later, after he died, 

I carried home his black and white brogues, the old white polish 

caked deep into cracks. Line of tiny holes along the toes and sides, 

swooping across the instep. 

Brogues—for treading the boggy places,

punched full of weepholes to let the water drain.

Published in Calyx, Vol 34 No. 2 (2024)