A poem by G. Bruce Boyer
I’d written this little poem on my 65th birthday, taking the hint of an image from both John Updike and R. L. Stevenson. Of course, as the rime is so pedestrian and the rhythm limps along like a three-legged mule, I take full blame for the whole of it.
The Clotheshorse Unseated,
My Birthday, 2006
Here so quick at sixty-five,
But glad to know I’m still alive.
Having taken more than ever given,
And never for any of it striven.
Sitting here and looking back,
Remembering what I tried to pack
For my little unessential trip
In the hold of my unsteady ship,
I thought I had the clothes I’d need
For any clime and any deed
For which I’d see myself embark
On almost any little lark.
Today I find, to my dismay,
Those things I’d packed just yesterday,
Thinking them prerequisite,
No longer even seem to fit.
I guess it’s all as it must be,
Others have found it much like me,
That when our ships have crossed the bar,
After we’ve gasped our last au revoir,
We’ll sail along the River Stix,
And leave behind the blows and licks,
To find, as we hear Charon’s call,
We really need no clothes at all.
“Home is the hunter, home from the hill, / And the sailor home from the sea.”
And home the sartorialist, closet forlorn, his wardrobe on E-Bay just short of free.
– G. Bruce Boyer