a poem on thursday : socks

The seasons have definitely turned around here.  I came home on Monday to find the fig leaves on our little tree completely golden.  We managed to get one tiny (but oh so delicious) fig off the tree before it started dropping it's leaves.  The rest of the fruit is slowly dropping off, unripe, along with the leaves.  Not such a great success at trying to grow a Meditteranean plant on a balcony in Berlin.   Better luck next year perhaps?   

But onto the poem.  

This week's prompt was "comfort".  To me, autumn means the beginnings of nights spent sitting on the couch, listening to the rain and feeling like knitting under a blanket is the only sensible thing to be doing.  I found this lovely war poem by Jessie Pope and loved the rhythm of the words intermixed with the knitting pattern, you can just imagine some mother, wife or girl-friend finding comfort in knitting socks for their 'fella' off at war.  

Socks

 Shining pins that dart and click
In the fireside's shelered peace
Check the thoughts the cluster thick - 

20 plain and then decrease.


He was brave - well, so was I - 
Keen and merry, but his lip
Quivered when he said good-bye - 

Purl the seam-stitch, purl and slip.


Never used to living rough, 
Lots of things he'd got to learn;
Wonder if he's warm enough - 

Knit 2, catch 2, knit, turn.


Hark! The paper-boys again!
Wish that shout could be suppressed;
Keeps one always on the strain -

Knit off 9, and slip the rest.


Wonder if he's fighting now, 
What he's done an' where he's been;
He'll come out on top somehow - 

Slip 1, knit 2, purl 14.

- Jessie Pope