‘Free shoes, help yourself’

Buckling their thin soles,
These squads of shoes
In lines under the rain
Are shining this morning,
Rocking on round heels
Or turning up at the toes
As if to jump for joy
Or jump out of the way:
Oxfords and safety shoes
And boots whose arches fell
Flatter than handprints
Are warping back to life,
The cracked and wrinkled hides
As supple as fishskins
Now in the falling water
Under their own steam
Like the rising ghosts of socks,
The sneakers stuck together,
Slippers whose pompoms
Bloom like anemones,
Golf shoes for trespassing,
The tongueless, the mismatched
For an hour helping themselves,
Free as long as they last.