Shijo George Poet Free verse

The Booted Legend

They were born where roads were only rumors
and horizons learned to bend.
Wind taught them the language of distance,
and stone taught them patience.
Before they knew their own names,
they knew the sound of walking.
Their boots were not made for comfort
but for covenant.
Leather cut from the hide of hardship,
soles shaped by rivers and wars,
stitched with the thread of stubborn will.
Each boot carried the memory of a thousand grounds
and the promise of a thousand more.
They walked when horses failed,
when wheels broke their backs on cliffs,
when ships turned home from storming seas.
They trusted the honest ache of muscles
over the deceit of ease.
Ash of the Northern Ice
left footprints in snow that glowed blue at night.
Wolves learned his pace
and followed him like prayers.
The cold tried to write his ending
in white silence,
but his boots answered with fire.
Mira of the Copper Fields
crossed lands where the sun ruled like a tyrant.
Her shadow melted behind her,
yet her steps rang like bells of iron.
Where she passed, seeds woke from sleep,
and dust learned the meaning of rain.
Bram of the Mountain Spine
walked upward until clouds bowed.
He tied broken flags around his ankles
and made them march again.
Avalanches whispered his name
before they dared to fall.
Together they formed the leather chorus,
a hymn of soles on stone,
a prayer hammered into dirt.
They marched through cities that drowned in gold,
through kingdoms that traded souls for silk,
through deserts that hid skeletons under sand
like secrets too heavy for the sky.
When night rose like a black tide,
their boots made constellations on the ground.
Stars leaned closer to hear their rhythm.
Even the moon kept time.
They did not fear monsters,
for monsters had always feared the sound of approach.
They feared stillness more than death,
feared roots more than graves.
To stop was to rust.
To walk was to live.
Storms tried to unlace them.
Fire tried to swallow them.
War tried to chain them.
But their steps were older than empires
and stronger than borders.
In valleys where language broke apart,
their boots spoke for them.
In places where maps forgot themselves,
their footprints wrote new alphabets.
Children learned direction
by following their echoes.
Old men swore that when the earth groaned,
it was only turning to hear them better.
Old women said the road had a heartbeat
and it matched their stride.
Poets tried to trap them in ink
but ink could not walk.
One day, the world ran out of edges.
There were no more cliffs to climb,
no more fires to cross,
no more shadows to outrun.
So the Booted Legends stepped beyond distance
and entered the long horizon.
Some say they became thunder.
Some say they became stars.
Some say they became the pulse inside every traveler
who refuses to stay still.
If you listen at dawn
when streets are empty
and dust remembers wind,
you can hear them still.
Not as men.
Not as women.
Not as names.
But as footsteps
teaching the world
how to move forward.

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