POEM: backpack ballad

backpack ballad
(to Gretchen)

today I retired my old backpack
a gift from my younger sister
who found her footing earlier than I did

it was one of those backpacks
with one strap, the kind that slings
heroically across the chest

I always felt, when putting it on
as if an adventure were about to start
John Williams music in the background

that backpack carried so much music
hundreds, maybe thousands of CDs
stuffed in till the zipper asked for mercy

it held notebooks full of poems, too
the green one from Kate, the black ones
I bought even when I didn’t need them

now, though, there’s a hole in the bottom
if there’s one thing a backpack can’t tolerate
it’s a hole in the most important place

so I bought a new messenger bag
just in time to go back home where
an adventure is surely about to start

21 August 2013
Auburn AL