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Robert W Service - Our Pote
Work rating: Medium

A pote is sure a goofy guy;
He ain`t got guts like you or I
        To tell the score;
He ain`t goy gumption `nuff to know
The game of life`s to get the dough,
        Then get some more.
Take Brother Bill, he used to be
The big shot of the family,
        The first at school;
But since about a year ago,
Through readin` Longfeller and Poe,
        He`s most a fool.

He mopes around with dimwit stare;
You might as well jest not be there,
        The way he looks;
You`d think he shuns the human race,
The how he buries down his face
        In highbrow books.
I`ve seen him stand for near an hour,
Jest starin` at a simple flower -
        Sich waste o` time;
The scribblin` on an envelope . . .
Why, most of all his silly dope
        Don`t even rhyme.

Now Brother`s Jim`s an engineer,
And Brother Tim`s a bank cashier,
        While I keep store;
Yet Bill, the brightest of the flock,
Might be a lawyer or a doc,
    And then some more.
But no, he moons and loafs about,
As if he tried to figger out
        Why skies are blue;
Instead o` gittin` down to grips
Wi` life an` stackin` up the chips
        Like me an` you.

*   *   *   *   *  *   *   *   *   *

Well, since them final lines I wrote,
We`re mournin` for our Brother Pote:
    Bill crossed the sea
And solved his problem with the beat,
For now he lies in peace and rest
    In Normandie.
He died the bravest of the brave,
And here I`m standin` by his grave
        So far from home;
With just a wooden cross to tell
How in the blaze of battle hell
As gloriously there he fell -
        Bill wrote his "pome".
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