We arrived home in Madison to some cool spring weather. Highs in the low 50s are a shock, but it does give me a chance to wear some of my sweaters that I haven't seen in months. On the trip home I finished a pair of socks which helped keep me cope with the cool weather. They reminded me of Pablo Neruda's poem about socks.

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.

Poem info
I found this poem and many more on on this poetry site. They have over 310,000 poems on their site! I'm looking forward to exploring it more.

Sock info
Poems Sock yarn from Wisdon. Size 0/2mm needles. Pattern based on Discovery Sock from Personal Footprints for Insouciant Sock Knitters by Cat Bordhi.  You would think after thousands of years of sock knitting there was nothing new to discover, but Cat Bordhi has invented a different way to knit a sock. She's a genius.