I am searching

through an ocean-going

library of memories,

searching for some pristine purity

in my life at sea

that can be pictured in sketches

other than fading, sepia-toned,

frayed at the edges,

cartoon reminders of me.

Sorry.

It is too late to resurrect

“might-have-beens”.

Age teaches me that.

Maybe at twenty, thirty,

back when Olive-Oil was alive,

and still my flat chested girl friend.

(What did I see in her?)

Maybe at forty

before Bluto beat me bloody!

(What did she see in him?)

But certainly not at seventy-five

when, constrained by a well earned-

if undeserved –

fame,

I declare, “Nope!”

Bone is bone

and done is done

and none of us warrants

a new skeleton!

Besides,

I have so many of my own,

sequestered in my tight locked,

ship-board cabin closets.

And what would I be

without those padlocked-away-sins,

forgiven or not,

to remind me of my guilt

and my innate capacity

to hurt others and myself?

(Damn that fat hamburger-eating-oaf Wimpy!)

What would I be

but some serial-sinner-sailor

returning to the scenes of the sins,

for a possible prepping

to commit them

all over again.

A cold, re-sketching of the strip,

with but an cracked open can of half eaten spinach

to my name,

biceps no longer bulging,

weak at the finish,

all for the the much diminished

fame of a final Sunday Edition?

No.

“Grin and bare it, Swabby,”

I tell myself.

Grin and bare,

what ever my present condition.

Life is not a test.

In the final strip,

I am what I am,

whatever L.C. Segar

meant me

to be.