The storm was raging within, he thought,
Not out in the trees and fields,
It must have strayed in his mouth, and caught
His throat, for the breath it yields,
He sat himself on a wayward bench
Composed his thunderous sighs,
And caught a glimpse of a passing *****
With slumbering, lustrous eyes.

She had auburn hair, and a face so fair
She had dimples set in her cheeks,
She walked the snow in an afterglow
Of the first snowfall for weeks.
He’d sat so long and the storm was strong
As he waited the snow to melt,
She kicked the flurries of snow along
In the inward storm he felt.

Her eyes were a vivid lightning flash
That lit up his restless mind,
Her footsteps, more of a thunder crash
At his heart, but more unkind,
Her smile revealed her perfect teeth
Like a line of pure white stones,
Or headstones, laid in a cemetery
Like some bleached and ageing bones.

Her auburn hair was a-twist out there
All twirled like a plaited bun,
It seemed to fly in his storm-wracked sky
Blotting the morning sun,
Then as she passed, she looked in his eyes
And she saw the hail and sleet,
And caught her breath like a glimpse of death
Or the end of life, complete.

He stood, and held out his hand to her
And she halted in her stride,
Opened her mouth, and thunder clapped
And he felt it crash inside,
‘Nothing you say will draw me in
It would only do me harm,
If I should wed, it wouldn’t be
To you, as the Bride of Storm.’

David Lewis Paget

She said she’d made a collection up
Of certain sticks and stones,
To cast a spell in a paper cup
That drank, would break his bones,
She followed him to the mountain top
And down to the pebbled beach,
But every time she got close enough
She found he was out of reach.

He’d seen her sat at her cottage hearth,
He’d watched her casting her spells,
He knew that something quite dreadful was
Heading his way as well,
She’d not been over forgiving when
He’d been well caught in a lie,
And watched the remains of repulsive spells
As they came stumbling by.

He got in the way of avoiding her,
He wouldn’t respond to her call,
That’s when she made her potion up,
No-one would have him at all!
She had a draught that would bring him down
If ever it passed his lips,
She cast her spell from the deepest well
And it only took two sips.’

He turned his collar across his face
You could only see his eyes,
Then swept on up with his cloak in place
When she slept, as the moon would rise,
He seized the potion sat on the hearth
And he poured it down her throat,
And heard the crackle of breaking bones
As she screamed, one long, high note.

She lies awake in the cottage gloom
But she can’t quite make a fist,
Her spells that lie in the darkened room
Are beyond her shattered wrist,
While he will sit, and read them aloud
Though he never will see her smile,
For every spell is part of the shroud
He will torch in a little while.

David Lewis Paget

Just twelve, I swear, I must have been
The day they took the Witch of Steen
And put a halter round her neck
To teach her magic some respect.

The women in the village square
Tore off her clothes, and pulled her hair
Then called their menfolk out to view
Who crossed them there, what they would do.

They tied her hands behind her back
The rope around her neck was slack,
But tied to Jethro’s stubborn mule
They led her naked, like some fool.

And all her secrets lay out there
Uncovered, in the open air,
She looked quite beautiful to me
Her naked form, such artistry.

The mule dragged her, painful and slow
Along the lanes where they would go
As gusts of breeze blew out her hair,
Revealed what she was hiding there.

And I, I followed, just a lad
Whose eyes were full of her, by god,
Whose ******* were pert and firm back then
Whose thighs held secrets, hid from men.

I saw that tiny tuft of hair
That hid her womanhood in there,
That plagued me since, for every night
I’d think of it in dread delight.

But still they led her, lane and field
No place that she was not revealed,
They took her to the ducking pond
Where life or death would lie beyond.

And when they laid the ducking stool
With her aboard, across the pool,
Her voice rang out, this buxom maid
With words the villagers dismayed.

‘For all that you come judging me,
Look to yourselves, your pedigree,
What sons and daughters sprang at night
From phantom fathers, bred in spite.’

‘When husbands were out tending fields
And wives would wait, temptation yields.
What shadows stood by window ledge
Gained entry to some marriage bed?’

The women quaked before her spell
And screamed, then ducked the witch to hell
And would have left her there to drown
Had not the menfolk brought her round.

In mercy then, they set her free
And she had screamed, ‘A curse on thee!
‘Your cattle will roam free and late
Your catch won’t hold the cattle gate.’

‘Your crops will flatten in the fields
When hail and sleet destroy their yields,
And mud will fill your village hall,
Your church collapse, your roofs will fall.’

She left there with a final shout
The things she cursed, they came about,
But I was left a lifetime dream,
That naked witch, the Witch of Steen.


David Lewis Paget

There is something that feeds on the evil
It finds in the well of its mind,
To bolster the work of the devil
And other bad cess it might find,
It joys in the hurt it is causing
It revels in pain it may bring
To all who once loved and adored it,
For it never loved anything.

Revenge is the one thing that drives it,
A payback to feed discontent,
But it does it in dark and in hiding,
It’s sly and it doesn’t repent,
It tries to unwrap any secrets
That may have been hidden from view,
In diaries, letters and journals,
Or letters, specific to you.

It doesn’t know shame in its spying,
That others feel only disgust,
A soul that is black and repulsive
That’s headed for Hell, as it must,
It thinks its success is so clever
And laughs when revealing its scar,
But others laugh at you, not with you,
And evil, you know who you are!

David Lewis Paget

I’d only been gone for a moment,
A moment was all that it took,
And up to the edge of that moment
I’d been sitting, and reading a book,
Then I looked up and saw you were staring,
But your eyes were glazed over, I see,
And I swear you weren’t looking, but glaring
At something you hated in me.

Then the room began twisting and turning
To the sound of the storm’s rapid roar,
As it went racing up to the ceiling,
And dived in a twirl to the floor,
It snatched at the book I’d been reading
And it flung it straight up in the air,
On the cover it said ‘Time is Bleeding’,
And I thought, ‘I don’t want to go there.’

Still you clung to your chair, my Miranda,
While the furniture skittered and slid,
Some had headed out to the veranda
Where the glockenspiel lay on its lid,
But your face and your skin became older,
As the years yet to come hurried by,
And the air in the room became colder
When I heard, ‘You’re much younger than I.’

And that’s when I felt it receding,
That eddying moment of time,
That had shown me the love that was bleeding
It hadn’t been yours, it was mine,
I sheltered there on the veranda
From the clinical glance of your gaze,
For time was against you, Miranda,
And it showed, in a myriad ways.

I’d only been gone for a moment,
A moment was all that it took,
And up to the edge of that moment
I’d been sitting, and reading a book,
Then the storm battered in through the shutters,
And it snatched at the book in my hand,
But you’d gone, slipped away down the gutters
With all I had loved in the land.

David Lewis Paget

The place was a crumbling ruin,
It sat on the top of a hill,
If we hadn’t been travelling tired that day
We may have been travelling still,
But you said we ought to seek shelter there
From a sudden deluge of rain,
So I parked outside its terraces
And entered the palace of pain.

You were the first to say ‘It’s strange,
The feeling within these halls,’
While all I could hear were the scraping sounds
That came from the whispering walls.
It must have been long deserted, it
Was just like a pile of bones,
That someone left when its throat was cleft
And lay fading into its moans.

The night came down with a vengeance once
We’d made our camp on the floor,
And rain poured in at the windows that
Were probably there before,
You said we’d leave when the morning came
Once the sun was up, and bright,
We didn’t know that an age of shame
Wrapped that place in an endless night.

I tried to sleep but you’d wake me up
Each time that I dropped my head,
‘Didn’t you hear that dreadful scream?’
I seem to remember you said.
But all I heard were the awful groans
That echoed around the halls,
I couldn’t explain the sense of dread
That came from the whispering walls.

I thought that the rain poured down on us
I thought that we lay in mud,
I lit a match in the early hours
To see you covered in blood.
I said, ‘We’d better go back to sleep
Till the nightmare hour is past,
But then you noticed the blood on me
And you screamed, and lay aghast.

I wish that we’d never gone near the place
I wish we’d stayed in the car,
Then you’d still be who you used to be
And I would know where you are!
But you ran screaming into the night
When they came with their hoods and gowns,
With their bloodied hands and their burning brands
To burn the place to the ground.

David Lewis Paget

I woke in the early hours to find
My head between her thighs,
She hadn’t been there before, I swear
And I’m not a man who lies.
I’d seen her out in the Public Bar
Of the ‘Jacaranda Tree’,
Halfway along the Outback Track
On the way to Wendouree.

I’d seen her dance on the table tops
I’d seen her prance on the bar,
I’d said to Lance as I saw him glance
‘I don’t know where we are!’
He shrugged, to say that he didn’t care
As long as she danced that way,
Her stockings, down at her ankles and
Her skirt in disarray.

‘Now there is a ***** to turn your head,’
Said Lance, with a burst of pride,
He’d been out on the verandah, then
He’d turned to go back inside,
She’d joined him there for a moment,
Just brushed by for a quick connect,
But he hadn’t noticed her eyebrow raised
In a sign that said, ‘Reject!’

We both had our eighteen wheelers parked
Outside in the hotel grounds,
I was headed away up north
And he to the lights of town,
He offered to give her the sleeper cab
While he drove the star-filled night,
I looked away and I thought it sad,
But the trucks both looked alike.

I heard him leave at the midnight hour
And thought she was gone for good,
It wasn’t often I hauled this way
Or stayed in this neighbourhood.
But then I clambered into my bunk
Above, at the cabin’s rear,
And fell asleep like a hopeless drunk
Till the morning sun drew near.

I made an offer to buy that pub,
The ‘Jacaranda Tree’,
But only when she agreed to stay
And dance on the bar for me,
I asked if she’d meant to go with Lance
And she looked at me with scorn,
I sleep the sleep of a new romance
And the pillows keep me warm.

David Lewis Paget