"I found some magic boots" a short poem

[Erthona]

If that is true, I think you defeated yourself by your own cleverness, I know for that is often my problem. Cleverness is not often a virtue it seems. Still, it's a good poem, even if it failed to do what you wanted it to. That is often the case in poetry and I do not mean that in the case of those people who throw shit against the wall and hope something sticks. It's just that sometimes something inside us hi-jacks our works and decides to do something else with it.
I think the problem there was no worth attached attached to the loss of the "steps". That is, the steps had no inherent worth, but saving time and effort did, so there was never any sense of loss because you were bypassing whatever was there. You could do it ironically like: in step "whatever" I missed shaking the rough old farmers hand who surely would have talked my ear off, delaying my progress and feeling me full of the wisdom of the earth/plow.

Something like that. That's just off the top of my head. The same could be done as someone day dreams looking out of an airplane window and thinking of all he is missing, just to save time. The point being we give up the richness of life in order to save time and make money and in modern time, we give up the real in order to get and be apart of the artificial. The point being, you could keep this poem the way it is, as it is interesting, and still have plenty of avenues to talk about missing things along the way because the focus is to get there as quickly as possible. Might even work better as the Seven League Boots are a bit obscure these days.
To mix metaphors, I agree, you missed the boat on this one, but their are plenty of shots left in your gun to try again.

Best,

dale