She’s twelve, the girl who discovers a foot
Washed ashore in British Columbia,
Interviewed, she chatters, puzzled, amazed. 

Attention is an awkward thing, she thinks,
And now she’s been chosen as the witness
To the arrival of a miracle

Because two more feet, both left, like the one
She found, have landed on nearby beaches,
All of them wearing size 12 running shoes

Like a tiny cluster of rare cancer.
Surely, they had mates, though left and right feet 
Respond differently to the sea’s currents,

According to the oceanographer 
Who tracked, once, the paths of rubber ducks spilled
From a ship like a flotilla for joy.

Somewhere, then, the shoed right feet are floating
Toward another country, size 12 men 
Targeted like unbribable judges.

Those feet will wash up on a thousand blogs;
Those feet will litter the crowded beaches
Of a million chat room conversations

Until time’s incinerator turns them 
To ash, becoming the urban legend
Of the wilderness that always concludes

With a girl who still believes that three men
Are limping somewhere on the prosthetics
For impossible chance, not already

Eaten by the grim mouths of the ocean,
That chosen girl growing into knowing
There is no limit to what we are asked

To accept, giving a personal name
To the serious surprise of sorrow,
Unable to stop scanning like those men

From our town’s senior center who carry
Metal detectors to the nearby park,
Walking with stuttering steps like robins, 

Their heads cocked a moment, then cocked again,
Their beaks passing over the unmown grass,
Listening for the soil’s faintest sound.