Whose Boot Is It Anyway? Poem by Stan Petrovich

Alone & footless,
Sideswiped on the highway,
South of Grand Canyon,
The boot weathers the rain.
Whose feet had felt its pain?
The absent man hurdled from a car,
Dead, now a ghost among the juniper flat.
Gone now, but a pariah to his own left boot's wall.

A bum, a hectic gambler, a heretic,
Or just some dozing motorist;
Another question remains;
Was the little white cross sticking out of the pavement
His? Or was that happenstance,
Laced up to the top, some unlikely chance?

No man is here.
Yet a man was there.
A man who lost his life & line,
Leaving one boot as a puzzle to find.

It gives me a chasm of a feeling,
& at 80 mph my mind is reeling,
Where in all this wilderness
Is the fellow with at least one bare foot
& what fate did he meet?