The waves came crashing in from the sea
We were caught on a spit of land,
With no way back, not one I could see,
I reached and I held her hand.
‘I’ve never seen the breakers so high,’
She cried, in a fit of fear,
‘You must have known, it’s hard to deny,
So why did you bring me here?’

‘I brought you for a moment of truth,
A moment for you and I,
There’s only you, and me and the sea,
This spit of land and the sky.
We never manage to be alone,
There’s always somebody near,
And every time I open my mouth
There’s somebody else to hear.’

The spray was drenching her beautiful hair,
And running into her eyes,
Her make-up running most everywhere,
It gave her a look of surprise.
‘You might have picked a quieter spot,
We still could have been alone,
You never said what you wanted, or not.’
‘I needed you on your own.’

‘I needed to tell you that I’m in love,
Have been since the day we met,
But you’ve hung out with Derek, the drone,
I hoped that you’d leave him yet.’
‘He’s just a friend, I told you before,
He’s easy to be around,
You do go on! He isn’t my love,
You cover the same old ground.’

I took the ring from my sodden shirt
And held it for her to see,
‘I’d like you to take this diamond ring,
And say you belong to me.’
‘I only belong to myself,’ she said,
‘I’m nobody’s girl in the end,
But if I put on your diamond ring,
I may just give you a lend.’

The breakers crashed, like a waterspout,
And washed us both off the spit,
We laughed so much as we flailed about,
Trying to swim through it.
We headed in to the distant beach
Together, and that was the thing,
For when we got to the sandy breach
I saw she was wearing the ring.

David Lewis Paget

I heard the ring of the ambulance
As it barrelled down from E,
But wasn’t really awake, so didn’t
Know that it came for me.
They had me strapped on a stretcher
In the twinkling of an eye,
And only when we arrived, did I
Believe I was going to die.

The pain had been unrelenting since
I’d eaten the evening meal,
It started up in my shoulder, and
My hands, I couldn’t feel,
I felt my head become groggy, till
I finally passed out,
It must have been when I hit the floor
That I heard your sudden shout.

They said it must be a heart attack
So they’d have to run a test,
But while I lay in the hospital
I’d better get some rest.
I kept on coming and going while
The questions filled my head,
I wondered if I’d been poisoned,
Did you really want me dead?

I’d thought that it tasted funny, at
The time, as I said to you,
The meat had had a consistency
As if it was cooked in glue,
And then some of those vegetables
I couldn’t recognise,
You said I’d not know the difference
Between casseroles and pies.

And then, it must be about the time
That my forehead became damp,
You said whatever I knew of food
You could write on a postage stamp,
But you had been acting strangely since
That boarder came to stay,
Spending your time in drinking wine
That he’d brought from Bordelais.

I knew to look for the danger signs
In your long retreat from me,
I knew at once that he had designs
When his hand had touched your knee,
And every time that I left you two
Alone on a sultry day,
I had to wonder what you would do
To while the time away.

Your friend, Margot, has visited me
Alone in my hospital bed,
She said you were picking mushrooms,
Which has left my mind in dread.
She always seems to have favoured me,
And she sat and held my hand,
She said I shouldn’t have married you,
This is what you would have planned.

My mind was full of suspicion when
You came to visit me,
But you had cried, said I almost died,
And that brought you misery.
‘You know that I’ve always loved you,
But that love has brought me pain,
Whenever you look at Margot, it’s
Like losing you again.’

I asked her about the boarder and
She said that he’d gone before,
‘I only ever played up to him
To make you want me more.’
We’re both a prey to suspicions
And the heartache that they lend,
We’re over that, and we made a pact,
Our love is on the mend.

David Lewis Paget

She thought that she woke in the morning
To a world that was filled with dread,
Though nothing was changed, or rearranged
Her lover was surely dead.
He’d gone to drive in a shady lane
And said he’d be back by three,
A phone call brought her a wealth of pain,
His car crashed into a tree.

And all the lights in the world went out
For even the sun was dim,
Her love was grey, for a day away
Her life had revolved round him.
Never again would she see him smile,
Or feel the thrill of his touch,
Or roll and play in the barnyard hay
When she cried and sighed, ‘Too much!’

But there in the darkness of her room
His phantom seemed to appear,
His face showed care as he stroked her hair,
‘You know that I love you, dear.’
Her tears were like a river that flows
As she tossed and turned in the gloom,
‘I never thought you would leave me here
To seek your rest in a tomb.’

And then she heard the jangle of keys
As she woke, and her eyes were wide,
He said, ‘I thought I would let you sleep
While I went out for a ride.’
She leapt on him and she pulled him down
To the warm, soft quilt on the bed,
‘The only ride you can take, is me,
My God! I dreamt you were dead!’

David Lewis Paget

The day was grey when it came my way
With a clatter of wheels and hooves,
Echoing off the cobblestones
And under the red tile roofs,
The rain was glistening in the road
And I was confused at first,
For what I’d thought was a coach and four
Went by as a horse drawn hearse.

The horse went stepping by, high and proud
With a coat like shining mail,
And ostrich plumes adorned its harness
Right down to its plaited tail.
Then in the hearse, a polished coffin
With silver plate inscribed,
The name of him, who encased within
Had clutched at his heart, and died.

I watched the hearse as it rolled away
And thought that it could be me,
When one day off in a future time
I departed my history,
The wheels had creaked like a ticking clock
Or a dripping tap, each turn,
Rolling along to the day we stopped,
Went home in a funeral urn.

The months slipped by with barely a sigh
Till I saw that hearse again,
It passed my way when the day was grey
And the clouds had threatened rain.
I read the name on the silver plate
As the hearse had passed on by,
And held my breath in the face of death
For I certainly knew that guy.

We’d been together at school back when
Though he was younger than me,
He’d been successful in all he’d done
And married Penelope.
The only woman I’d ever loved
But he’d snatched her heart away,
And now she plodded behind the hearse
Looking faded, old and grey.

Her eyes met mine and a bitter smile
Had flickered around her eyes,
I hadn’t seen her for years, and yet
Her look had the look of surprise.
I never saw her again until
She passed me by in the hearse,
Her name engraved on the silver plate,
I thought I was being cursed.

So now I wait by the garden gate
For the clatter of wheels and hooves,
Whenever the day is clouded and grey
And the sound echoes off the roofs.
All I can hear are the wheels of time
That pass like a ticking clock,
And wait for the hearse to halt outside,
Whether I know it, or not.

David Lewis Paget

My friend signed on to a coastal ship
His name, John Escobar,
He said, for only a week long trip
On the Steamship Southern Star.
While I worked out of the office of
The Southern Shipping Line,
To keep in touch with our fleet of ships,
But the Southern Star was mine.

They said that ship was a special case
It was fitted out so well,
They joked of equipment so refined
It could sail clear through to hell.
I’d noticed bulges down on the hull
But under the waterline,
They told me to keep an eye on it
When they said that it was mine.

It sailed on out of Ascension Bay
When the tide was running high,
The motor gave out a whisper like
The sound of a woman’s sigh,
It wasn’t supposed to leave the coast
But it went far out to sea,
And kept in touch with the dit-dit-dit
Of John on the morse code key.

He tapped a message out every hour
And I let him know I knew,
The ship was sailing way off its course
And lost to the coastal view,
He said the Captain was acting strange
He was locked up by the wheel,
That all the maps had been rearranged
And that something wasn’t real.

At midnight there was a message came
To me in a darkened room,
It said, ‘I don’t know what’s going on
But we just sailed past the Moon.’
I sent, ‘Just lay off the Bourbon, John,
If this is John Escobar,’
And he replied that the Captain died,
‘And I don’t know where we are.’

He sent more messages on the hour
And they seemed to grow apace,
By midday out on the second day,
‘We’re somewhere in outer space.’
I didn’t know if he’d gone berserk
But we’d lost the Southern Star,
It disappeared, and the thing was weird,
When I lost John Escobar.

The messages gradually petered out
So I don’t know if he lied,
He said some things about Saturn’s rings
And then the battery died.
I lost my job at the shipping line
For they put it down to me,
They said, ‘your ship was the Southern Star,
And you’ve lost the thing at sea.’

David Lewis Paget

They moved right in to the house next door
To our great regret, and pain,
It sounded as if they’d gone to war
Or the two were quite insane,
We should have kept right away from them
But did the neighbourly bit,
Went over and introduced ourselves
And watched them hiss and spit.

They couldn’t seem to control themselves
Not even in front of us,
If Jill had spoken to me like that
I’d have pushed her under a bus.
And if I’d shown her the same contempt
That Ray had shown to Liz,
She’d fly at me with a kitchen knife
Because that’s the way it is.

We left them there and we went back home
But appalled, with eyebrows raised,
‘Thank god that we’re not like them,’ we said,
Our relationship we praised,
They never stopped, we could hear them both
As they each tore each apart,
‘Why do they stay together that way?
It’s not an affair of the heart.’

We found that we had to go to them
On a crisp, September night,
They asked us both to adjudicate
After a terrible fight,
So I sat down with Liz, and Jill
Sat listening to Ray,
And after we got back home again
We had different things to say.

‘That Ray is the monster of the two,’
I said, ‘for he’s always wrong,’
‘That Liz is a shrew, I’m telling you,’
Said Jill as she sang his song.
We couldn’t agree on anything,
We even began to fight,
We had to agree to disagree
As I slept on the couch that night.

Then Jill took to walking in the park
With Ray as the nights wore on,
While I sat with Liz, here, in the dark,
And hugged her, while they were gone,
But never a word amiss was said,
You wouldn’t believe it true,
‘For Ray is a perfect gentleman,’
Said Jill, ‘and nicer than you.’

‘Well, Liz would have been my heart’s desire,
If I’d only met her first,’
The terrible jibes were steel and fire,
It seemed that we both were cursed,
And then came the day Jill ran away,
With Ray, and I slept with Liz,
I said that I’d love her every day
For that is the way it is.

A year went by and I saw Jill cry
When we met at night in the dark,
And I was miserable too, I sighed,
To Jill in the midnight park,
‘What happened to our relationship,
We seem to have come off worse,’
‘They’re both as bad as each other, Jill,
Meeting them was a curse.’

But there was never a going back
To capture what we had lost,
We’d been the tools of a pair of fools
And now were paying the cost,
For Liz flings terrible barbs at me
While Ray tears Jill apart,
We pay the price, and it isn’t nice,
It’s not an affair of the heart.

David Lewis Paget

Walking among the Autumn leaves
On a cold and blustery day,
Between an avenue of trees
As the daylight passed away,
The shadows lengthened across my path
And my way was hit or miss,
As a sudden wind would seem to blend
My other world, with this.

A world where nothing would make much sense
I’d lost it all, I knew,
Where day was night when it should be bright
And it left me, looking for you,
A world of shadows and woods and streams
Where there’d been a town before,
And the sea crept in where it might have been
For a million years or more.

While creatures high in the treetops there
Reflected their blinking eyes,
From a sudden ray at the close of day,
Just as the Moon would rise,
It was such an alien place to be
It was grim, and chill, and old,
As I wandered by an ancient sea
In a dark place of the soul.

I remembered how you had said to me
On the last day that we’d met,
How I would rue the loss of you
In a wasteland of regret.
And I had laughed as I slammed the door
To return the way I came,
Not thinking that I would miss you too,
But the end result was pain.

While you remained in the hospital
And stared with your sunken eyes,
I couldn’t bear that I’d put you there
With my lack of care, and my lies.
The doctor said you were almost dead
With your heart split open wide,
It’s only now, and it must be said,
That it wasn’t you that died.

David Lewis Paget