Stories

I look down at my feet,
And I know that they have to keep moving,
To places I've marked on maps,
And unknown streets with good old chaps.
To the narrow lanes of old towns,
To vast meadows,  the Steppes and the Downs.
To that antique shop in the heart of the city,
To the cheap old bar serving whiskey to a traveller gritty.
To those universes lying within those book exchanges,
And that old man singing with his mandolin outside his grange.
I look down at my feet
And I know I have to go on,
Because that's what fuels the fire in me,
Fills me with the unmatched, untamed esprit.
And when I look at my hands,
I know they have to pour down
All the stories I lived in those towns.
Of those scars, those bruises,  those fears unleashed,
Of new friends made and old relations breached.
Of those nights I spent talking to a stranger under the stars,
And those evenings I spent drunk in the local bar.
Those mornings that I woke up to author another story,
Of those days when my worn out shoes told their own story.