I’ve read and loved the Robert Service poems.

Both his deep and lighter works have much to say

and it struck me that the heroes of his verses

can still be seen around us, to this day.

 

Where will you find these men so rash and ready?

Can I really show you where they are, you say?

Just go to any job site in your area

and you’ll see them working for their hourly pay.

 

But are there any men like his old heroes?

Who, if he were alive, once more today,

would inspire him to write another saga,

that would bring the tears of laughter to an eye?

 

It came to me while seated in a mess hall,

in a campsite, far from the nearest town.

That the men who sat around me eating supper

Where the same that Service wrote of in his poems.

 

There were big men, slow and gentle in their habits

and the smaller kind, who make a lot of noise.

There were those who worked hard to earn a dollar

and others who behaved like little boys.

 

I too have worked in many far-flung places,

From Arabian Desert to the frozen north

and while I am no Robert Service Poet,

These stories of real men, I here set forth.

David Garlick, Victoria, June, 1986