Pleas to a Missing Sock

[BobBradshaw]

Pleas to a Missing Sock

Distraught, I draped posters
with pictures of you around town.
I went on television, imploring
your return.

Months went by. I started
a Missing Sock club, spent
my weekends volunteering
at a Missing Sock Hotline.

I blogged, begging you
to think of your loved ones.
Your mate is thinning,
inconsolable.

We worry. Are you dirty,
worn from your wandering,
too proud to come home? I walk
barefoot on cold hard floors

this winter as penance
for any mistreatment--running
shoeless with you on dusty
baseball diamonds,

and wading into a creek frantic
for tadpoles--having to wring
you out, leaving you and your
beloved partner out all night to dry.

How heartless I was!
Now I would do anything
to have you underfoot,
to stroke your woolly sole,

to see you and your partner
again in my drawer,
your bodies coiled tightly
together, like lovers.

[RWCJames]

Bob - You start this off in great bathetic fashion:

Distraught, I draped posters
with pictures of you around town.
I went on television, imploring
your return.

Then it gets batheticer - in a very enjoyable way

all the way to that tenderness at the end:

to see you and your partner
again in my drawer,
your bodies coiled tightly
together, like lovers.


You might enjoy Neruda's "Ode to My Socks" in a similar spirit. Enjoyed - RC

[BobBradshaw]

Thanks, RC

[FrankDire]

Quite a revision from an earlier work of your Bob,
I must say I like it,
polished.

I ask would 'How heartless was I?'

be more to your taste than: 'How heartless I was?'

Reverting to an earlier name
Frank by any other name is still frank.

regards

[meenas17]

The pleas of the sock the desire to reunite evoke pathos.
The heartless of N, leaving the pair in the cold, makes one laugh.
Admixture of humour and longing make the poem interesting.
Enjoyed.

Meena.

[BobBradshaw]

Thanks, Meena....I'm glad the humor worked...best