Rocket Science

A poem about boots, love, and rocket science

My steel toe boots from 1994. Photo by Julie S. Paschold

Rocket Science

I

These boots were made for walking
down row after row of corn and soybeans

looking for pests and diseases,
for soil sampling acre after acre of fields

with the probe truck that looked
like a rocket launcher,

at least that’s what we told people
who asked what it was,

having learned how to use one
the year I turned 19, the same year
I bought these steel-toe boots,

one now bearing a line cut through the leather
where the steel stopped and protected
my foot from being crushed,

where cracks are starting to show along the side
where the ball of my foot ends despite
decades of rubbing religiously with mink oil,

the same year a graduate student
who worked with me joked about
this menial chore and said
well, it isn’t rocket science,