A Significant Birthday
 

Our own John's birthday (64) is tomorrow, Friday, 12/11. I suggest we all send him appropriate poetic tributes.

[Editing in] 16 lines or less, of course.

What, still alive at 64,
A pint-mad, print-glad lad like you?
You should have gone some years before
Amongst the many, not the few.

Your habits would have slain a clan
Of hardy Scotsmen ere their time,
So now you prove you are the man
Who cheats the odds to pull for prime.

Bottles and butts lie shed behind
The trail you long since vowed to blaze,
Yet here you stand, with unspent mind
And talents that shall yet amaze.

We honor you, soon-pensioneer,
Whose lines must Brown and Labour vex,
And pray you last another year
To get in full your monthly checques!

Isn't today the tenth? We'll have to write in a hurry!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!

When I'm Sixty Four
~ The Beatles

When I get older losing my hair,
Many years from now.
Will you still be sending me a valentine
Birthday greetings bottle of wine.

If I'd been out till quarter to three
Would you lock the door,
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I'm sixty-four.

You'll be older too,
And if you say the word,
I could stay with you.

I could be handy, mending a fuse
When your lights have gone.
You can knit a sweater by the fireside
Sunday mornings go for a ride.

Doing the garden, digging the weeds,
Who could ask for more.
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I'm sixty-four.

Every summer we can rent a cottage,
In the Isle of Wight, if it's not too dear
We shall scrimp and save
Grandchildren on your knee
Vera, Chuck & Dave

Send me a postcard, drop me a line,
Stating point of view
Indicate precisely what you mean to say
Yours sincerely, wasting away

Give me your answer, fill in a form
Mine for evermore
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I'm sixty-four.


--Many happy returns to our Vancouver Scottish poet and actuary.

God what a cock-up I have made.
Turns out it's our London Scottish poet and non-actuary. Happy birthday John W.

If this is the same mountain I heard read and talked to at West Chester 2009, he has a heavier head of hair than I, and looks as young as I want to. My clan has always featured attractive pattern baldness. We glory in our need for striking stetsons, whereas he can survive as a bare-headed boy at the drop of a hat. Well, congratulations, and the next time I know that I and my wife shall be in Victoria, I'll inform him too, so he can come into town & view the capitol building at night with us, and connect the dots.

If this is a different John, he won't know what I writing about, but congratulations anyway.

Duh. Me too. Oh well, woot-the-wool, so it goes.

Sam's effort is unbeatable, but I will do my humble best.

Dearest John W.,
let it not trouble you
that we're confused about
whom to address
now, and in verse, in re
somebody's natal day,
and, as a consequence,
leave things a mess!

Facebook has straightened out
what we were wrong about:
Whitworth's the man to con-
gratulate here.
Let's get a start again,
taking a sharper pen:
Raise for John W.
this light-verse cheer.

John

Sixty-four years pass, and one wonders just
how a man lives up to his Christian name.
Does he shout repentance, rolling in dust
and ash, eating too little for his frame?
Might he give in to numinous visions,
revelatory tales of open doors?
A man whose banner would lead divisions
to the far North and, surely, other wars?
Or his acclaim so great that he would preach
at a king's death but end with his head flung
into the Thames? No ... more likely he'd teach
verse, named for the one with the golden tongue.




Happy birthday, John.

Will You Still Need Me, Will You Still Feed Me?
 

Dear John,

I'm sniffling so as I pen you this letter.
It's so hard to tell you:
It doesn't get better!

Your bones have gone wanky, the telly's all bleary.
When it's time for amour,
Guess what? You're too weary!

Your heart's out of sinus, no blanket for Linus.
The feeling is oozing all out of your toes.
Is it callous to say: that's how it goes?
The tallies are all reading minus.

(But you are now officially the most profound blow hard on the block!)

As one 64 to another, Happy Birthday!