Socks

My clean socks smell of fields brought into order
Dirt, tamed by cotton
And cotton claimed by the long hands of workers who sewed the stitches
As faithful as a conductor's watch
As faithful as the baton of Brahms

Oh, I know they were made by machines
But the touches of those long needles moving tirelessly, like the axis of earth,
Always follow the hands of man, which first break the ice that we pass through
All things made and crafted, for our quickly-passing-through

So that young feet growing old, like mine,
Can find purchase, warm and dry, in one eternal moment
In all the wonder, treading the scent of mud and rock and so much green,
And the longing just above the next rise
And the next one, not so very far behind