The Satchel's Verse Poem by Oleg Vorobyov

With my interior packed choke-full
I travel pick-a-back to school.

My bearer is a school-kid en passant,
With wisdom on his back would-be savant.

Remember "the whining schoolboy" of Shakespeare?
So, I am his satchel at the peak of my career.

The maths, the reader, the pencil-box, the ruler,
Some exercise-books, the snack transports der Schuler.

To his uniformed back I patronizingly cling.
He's plodding on to hear the bell ring.

To set me heavily onto the polished board
And then produce his ostentatious hoard:

The glossy sketchbook of maiden whitish sheets,
The catapult, the yo-yo and some smuggled sweets.

Half-emptied I am set into the desk's dark hole
And wait to be re-filled - it is my humble role...


* * *

But as time wears, so I would also wear
To lose in my master's eye my flair.

My skin would wilt, my straps would also be gone,
I'd be neglected, wretched, woe-begone.

My end's a dump place amidst forsaken odds.
Things utilized unlikely deserve odes...

Oh, poet, thanks for crediting me a verse!
(From sow's ear one cannot make a purse)

You have contrived to sing a trivial thing,
Thus, to the fore my tribulations bring.

The poetic brain and a schoolbag are akin:
Both higgledy-piggledy like a notorious dustbin.