My heart is empty, my head is full
Of all that transpired in the past,
My short term memory’s wrapped in wool
My long term leaves me aghast,
As age has dotted my copy book
It leaves me the time to think,
Of all the faces I knew back when
That I washed right down the sink.

My eyes are dry, but I often cry
Inside, when a thought will sting,
Did I do everything that I could
Not just the easiest thing?
All those good souls who were lost to me
For the lack of a helping hand,
I put a curse on my universe
For not taking a bolder stand.

I know that some were afraid of me,
My voice and my tone was gruff,
Could they even see the love inside
Or was it never enough?
I only knew what I felt within
I’m sad if it didn’t show,
But I lost my friends, my kith and kin
When they turned around to go.

Why couldn't I ever see it then
I was too wrapped up in life,
And everything seemed important then
Except to my lonely wife,
I loved each one, yes I really did
Though I must admit to four,
And each one left for a better life,
Went out the revolving door.

So I must confess to selfishness
In a life that I lived for me,
I could never see another’s needs
Or take part in their history,
I can see the distant horizon now
And it’s time to call a halt,
But before I meet that judgement seat
I admit, it’s all my fault.

David Lewis Paget

She raked through the hearth fire ashes,
And scattered the chicken bones,
Then turned a page in a silent rage
And added some pebble stones,
She searched for a spell to end in hell
For the man who had told her ‘No,’
A spell of hate from her hearth fire grate
To follow wherever he’d go.

While he stood out on the roadway
Considering where he’d been,
He’d fled out there from the witches lair
Where she’d lured him, sight unseen.
At first she seemed to be beautiful
When first he entered her lair,
But then his eyes grew wide in surprise,
Got used to the dark in there.

She’d sat on a velvet cushion
And raised her skirt to the knee,
He thought he saw what she wanted him for
As she smiled unpleasantly,
He turned in a mild confusion,
His women were never so bold,
He sat and stared, got out of his chair,
Said ‘Sorry, you’re just too old.’

He looked at the streets about him,
And noticed the cobblestones,
They crissed and crossed, he was more than lost
In a muddle of chicken bones.
He couldn’t figure which way to go,
As they’d twist and turn out there,
And every time he would cross the road
He’d end back at the witches lair.

His mouth was a pile of ashes,
His mind full of pebble stones,
He found himself at the same front door
Spitting out chicken bones.
He burst back into the witches lair
And he saw her crouched by the hearth,
She stared at him with an awful grin,
Let out a terrible laugh.

‘Have you come again to reject me,
To tell me I’m just too old?
You’ll never recover your other lover,’
She said, and his heart turned cold.
He snatched at her faded Grimoire,
And turned to another page,
Then read a spell from a demon of hell
That was said, would make her age.

He muttered the words of the ritual
And her face grew taut with fear,
Her hair turned grey at the words he’d say
At the spell she’d not want to hear.
Her skin grew slack, and fell from her bones
As it said in that ancient tome,
Then his head had cleared as she disappeared,
And he went wandering home.

David Lewis Paget

She was walking the damp and cobbled streets
Like one with nowhere to go,
I saw her quivering, cold and shivering
Deep in a fall of snow,
I rarely talk to a stranger, but
She looked me straight in the eye,
And said, ‘Dear sir, could you help a girl,
I noticed you passing by.’

She took me out of my comfort zone,
She quite appealed to the eye,
I mumbled in an embarrassed tone,
I have been known to be shy.
‘I’ve not been warm for a week,’ she said,
‘And haven’t slept, and I’m tired,
I wonder if you could take me home
And let me sit by your fire?’

I didn’t want to be compromised,
I had a girl of my own,
But barely thinking, I said all right
And so she followed me home.
I built the fire with a log or two
Then she sat down by the grate,
And held her hands to the warming flames,
But the hour was getting late.

I wondered where she would sleep that night
With nowhere to go, she said,
Then like a fool, broke the golden rule
Said she could sleep in my bed.
‘I’ll stay out here on the couch, so you
Can catch right up on your sleep,’
If only I’d had a crystal ball
The future would make me weep.

She said that her name was Elspeth Jane,
Had run away from her home,
So stayed wherever there was no pain
From brutes, just bad to the bone.
She said she could tell a gentleman
And smiled, when looking at me,
I felt quite flattered, I must confess,
Not knowing what was to be.

I had a girl, and her name was Kate,
She’d be around in the morning,
I thought that the waif would be gone by then
But Kate showed as it was dawning.
‘Who is the girl, there in your bed?’
As Elspeth lay a-bed, stretching,
‘I thought I could trust you, now you’re dead,’
Then Elspeth said I was letching.

‘He picked me up for a bit of fun,
He didn’t mention a girlfriend,
He’s quite a lover, son of a gun,
You should hang on to your boyfriend.’
‘Why would you lie, you slept alone,’
I looked in horror at Elspeth,
The door then slammed, and Kate had flown,
While Elspeth asked about breakfast.

I should have kicked her out in the street,
I should have barred her forever,
But first I offered her toast to eat,
Then thought it was now or never.
She walked back in through the bedroom door
Her gown slipped down off her shoulder,
I knew that a starving man must eat,
And now, I’m wiser and bolder.

David Lewis Paget

We were out on a training mission
Up in a Neptune, hunting a sub,
The pilot was Captain Grissom
Taking a nap, aye, that was the rub,
The plane was on auto-pilot
Left in the hands of Lieutenant Free,
While I was down in the nose cone
Keeping a watch, beneath us the sea.

The skies were a starlit wonder
Never a cloud to temper the view,
The Moon, it had barely risen
Casting its light with a purple hue,
We’d dropped right down to a thousand feet
As the sonar checked the bay,
Then Free had said, ‘There’s a flock of birds,
Just a couple of miles away.’

The plotters gave out a chatter
Picking the signals up from the buoys,
The Snifter, it didn’t matter
It was detecting diesel oils,
But up on the pilot’s radar screen
Was a mass of darkened rows,
I heard Free say on the intercom:
‘It’s a swarm of migrant crows.’

We knew we’d better not hit them
They could be ****** into the pods,
And then if they clogged the jets our fate
Would be in the hands of gods,
I peered on out through the perspex cone
It was much too dark to see
A couple of thousand crows out there
With feathers as black as could be.

Free said we should duck beneath them
So he took us down real low,
The shapes had massed on the radar screen
There couldn’t be far to go,
And then I had caught a sight of them
The first of these flying things,
My voice croaked into the intercom,
‘None of these crows have wings.’

They flew on the straight and level
Bunched in groups of two or three,
I knew they were something nasty,
Then I heard Lieutenant Free,
He seemed to choke, he’s a rational bloke
And couldn't believe his eyes,
‘If you can see what they are, tell me,
Don’t give me a bunch of lies.’

But who’d be the first to say it,
I was pensive, down in the cone,
Nothing I’d say would mend it
If I was first to say on my own,
‘It looks like a flight of witches
All in black, and each on a broom,’
The crew back there were in stitches
Thinking that I was a ****** Toon.

The coven dived on an island
Covered in trees, and out in the bay,
I thought that we might collect one
But we gave them the right of way,
‘We’ll tell them, when we get back,’ said Free,
That it was a flight of crows,
Don’t anyone talk about witches, for
It’s best if nobody knows.’

David Lewis Paget

We went to live in Smuggler’s Cove
Near a cave, right on the beach,
Where once they’d hidden ill-gotten gains
In the cave, and out of reach.
The locals said two hundred years
Since the smugglers came ashore,
Carrying casks of Spanish wine
And a chest of gold moidores.

Led by a man called One-Eye Red
For the only one he’d got,
He’d lost the other, the locals said,
To a random pistol shot,
He wore a patch on the missing eye
For the wind blew in at the hole,
And froze his brain till he went insane
When the winter winds were cold.

He hung with Sally, a thatcher’s wife
Who would meet him in the cove,
And he would sample her plain delights
Till the time came round to rove.
She kept lookout on the cliff top there
For a glimpse of Revenue Men,
And would fire her flintlock pistol where
She had thought she’d sighted them.

My wife, her name was Sally too
And I’d rib her there in jest,
‘You’d better not hug a smuggler, Sally,
Dressed only in your vest.’
We’d laugh back then in those early days
As we worked to settle in,
But sensed some dread foreboding there,
In the air from old past sin.

It came on strong in the winter time
When the cove was filled with mist,
The mouth of the cave was grim and dark
It would almost seem possessed,
Then Sally started to walk at night
As the waves crashed into the shore,
She said she needed to beat the fright
That she’d suffered from times before.

I’d watch her walk to the darkened cave
Then halt to stare in the mouth,
It opened onto the northern shore
Then she’d turn, and wander south,
She’d come back shivering, pale and wan
And would warm up by the fire,
Then come out with the strangest thing
That it filled her with desire.

She’d strip right off by the glowing hearth
And I’m not one to complain,
She’d not been so very down to earth
Since the Lord invented rain,
Then one night when the mist was thick
I could barely see the cave,
When a ghostly figure stepped from the sea
And walked all over my grave.

Then Sally turned and she spoke to him
As my stomach churned inside,
They walked together into the cave
Like a bridegroom and a bride,
I left the cottage, the door ajar
And I ran down to the beach,
But when I got to the mouth of the cave,
Sally was out of reach.

Sally was out of reach that day
And has been each day since,
The phantom that walked her into the cave
Was One-Eye Red at a pinch.
I called and called for her to come back,
I even tried to insist,
But all that I’ve seen on a winter’s night
Are their shadows, abroad in the mist.

David Lewis Paget

The mornings were cold and dreary when
We used to meet at the Kirk,
And you would be sad and teary on
The blustery days to work,
I’d ask you why you were sad and drawn
But you usually pulled a face,
And knowing you, it was him again,
Your husband, what a disgrace!

I never could understand how you
Had chosen him over me,
He wouldn’t work in an iron lung
But had a ‘need to be free.’
I knew he wouldn’t look after you
But you were blind as a bat,
You didn’t even react when you
Had caught him, kicking your cat.

I knew that he had a violent side,
You said that it wasn’t true,
‘He’s always so warm and loving.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ’till he turns on you.’
But nevertheless you married him
And it’s been now almost a year,
Whenever we make our way to work
You’re never without a tear.

I cornered him in a midnight bar
He was more than a little drunk,
I said that he’d better treat you fair
And called him a low-life skunk,
He took a swing and I laid him out
Now you’re never to talk to me,
I see you now and you look away
So our friendship’s not to be.

On Monday, you had a broken cheek
And wore make-up on that eye,
I took you down to the hospital
And I watched you sit and cry,
I swore by God I would get revenge
While he drank at the local bar,
I took some snips and a couple of nips
As I doctored up his car.

Now God in heaven forgive me
Though I did what I had to do,
I need you so to believe me for
I’d not meant to injure you,
You met him there at the bar that night
As my heart was in my mouth,
And climbed aboard, and you hit the road
On the highway, headed south.

I followed some way behind you, and
I really had the shakes,
The oncoming lights would blind you
Then I saw him hit the brakes,
He ran off the road and hit the tree
And you both went through the screen,
I’ve never seen so much blood before
And I knew I’d lost my dream.

I’m standing beside your coffin in
That tiny little Kirk,
The one where we met on Sundays, and
Before we went to work,
No matter how violent he had been
I’d played too fast and loose,
And though he was dead, I knew in my head,
Our sins had come home to roost.

David Lewis Paget

I look for you in the twilight glow
When the sun dips over the rim,
When it’s night time here and it’s daytime there
And I think of you there with him.
Though you said, ‘It’s just for a holiday,
And I promise that I’ll be good,’
Well I’m sure you were, as he stroked your hair
In the shade of the underwood.

Whenever the twilight’s coming on
And the Moon moves up in the sky,
I sit and dream in a cold moonbeam
And mull over the question, ‘Why?’
You said that you had two itchy feet
In a sense, they wanted to roam,
And though you were trying to be discreet
I knew you were leaving home.

So now I sit, and cry in the dark
Of the twilight’s utter gloom,
And think of you in a pleasure park
Where you flew on your witches broom.
I know you couldn’t be on your own
I can see the dark shape of him,
He’s there when you ought to be alone
As you taste of the fruits of sin.

The sun peers over the morning rim
As I bid goodbye to the night,
And see where I shattered the mirror in
That I look like a sleepless fright.
The silence shrieks with a telephone ring,
As I answer it, you say:
‘I’m looking forward to coming home,’
And, ‘Thanks for the holiday!’

David Lewis Paget