Thursday, April 25, 2013

Sharing a Poem


I saw this poem posted on another blog I follow and thought I'd share it too.  

Ode to My Socks
Mara Mori brought me
a pair of socks
which she knitted herself
with her sheepherder's hands,
two socks as soft as rabbits.
I slipped my feet into them
as if they were two cases
knitted with threads of twilight and goatskin,
Violent socks,
my feet were two fish made of wool,
two long sharks
sea blue, shot through
by one golden thread,
two immense blackbirds,
two cannons,
my feet were honored in this way
by these heavenly socks.
They were so handsome for the first time
my feet seemed to me unacceptable
like two decrepit firemen,
firemen unworthy of that woven fire,
of those glowing socks.

Nevertheless, I resisted the sharp temptation
to save them somewhere as schoolboys
keep fireflies,
as learned men collect
sacred texts,
I resisted the mad impulse to put them
in a golden cage and each day give them
birdseed and pieces of pink melon.
Like explorers in the jungle
who hand over the very rare green deer
to the spit and eat it with remorse,
I stretched out my feet and pulled on
the magnificent socks and then my shoes.

The moral of my ode is this:
beauty is twice beauty
and what is good is doubly good
when it is a matter of two socks
made of wool in winter. 

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Ten on Tuesday

Ten things I've learned or re-learned recently:

1.  The tax code is 100 years old.  The initial code was one page...today's is, what...something like 73,000 pages.

2.  No matter how many times I tell Gracie to "go lay down", she stays frozen and stares at me.

3.  My dog REALLY loves me.

4.  Getting your hands dirty while digging in the garden is fun and rewarding...even if you have to spend a few minutes scrubbing dirt from under your nails.  Digging in the garden with your daughter is even better.

5.  At some point I really should stop casting on projects and finish something.

6.  The "double-D" cutting edge on my CutCo knife cuts through tomatoes and fingers quite easily.

7.  I shouldn't cut my finger were it interferes with my knitting.  But I shall not be defeated by a band-aided finger when it comes to my knitting!

8.  Watching Spring come out, even after a somewhat mild winter, is wonderful.

9.  When the "Special News Report" comes up on the TV now...I just brace for the news.

10.  I love Mr. Rogers...