Lather

Leather was thirty years old today

They took away all of his toys

His mother sent a newspaper clipping yesterday

About his old friends who'd stopped being boys

There was Halsey Green just turned thirty-three

His leather chair waits at home

And Sergeant Al Jones, twenty-seven years old

Commanding his very own team

But Leather still finds it a nice thing to do

To lie about nude in the sand

Drawing pictures of mountains that look like bumps

And thrashing the air with his hands

But wait

Old Leather's productive, you know

He produces the finest of sound

Putting drumsticks on either side of his nose

Snorting the best wigs in town

But that's all over, child

Leather was thirty years old today

And Leather came home from his town

He looked at me, eyes wide, and plainly said

"Is the war over? Am I still young, mommy?"

And the children called him famous

But the old men call him senile

And sometimes he's so nameless

That he hardly knows which words to say and what games to play

And I should have told him, "No, you're not old"

I should have let him go on smiling

But that's all over, child