So they flee; once beautiful narratives detached from me and took off running.
For my own sake, I eventually follow and take off hunting.

Crossing the bridge to the ocean, finding no words above or beneath their pillars or the sun-setting shades on the water in motion.

Maybe I'll find the words perched on the bridge as a little black bird, who mirrored me in a way that resonated with my soul but whose tune sang not one melodic word.

I go to the ocean, and heavy waves collapsing onto beds of sand sighed no release for me, and I leave.

Home, I paint a picture and coaxed a thousand  empty words out of it, that rang like broken records and sang to me deep into the night.

I awake to a blizzard, beautiful white.
A cold I felt I'd brewed with my mind
So I try and dive into a novel only to find my mind's waters shallow, and the pages became no more than ink printed paper.
I think myself incapable;

I look to the bottle, mostly white,
It sat on my nightstand by white papers that so longed for me to write.
I kick my head back and let the words pour from the bottle and back into me, loosening my grip, they could finally flow free.

This page is white as a white can be
Til I lift my pen and trace
A scrawl of black from an inky sac,
A tale of the human race.
I pick and choose, who wins, who lose
Their brief duet with fate,
Who twist and turn as they live and learn
To dance at my garden gate.

I paint in the cliffs and the sky above,
The shingle, down on the shore,
A tiny cottage that’s full of love
With a garden of herbs, and more,
A man who walks on the winding path,
He’s a difficult man to gauge,
Will he be happy, or sad, or what
When I get to the end of the page?

I’ll call him Clive, for he’s so alive
When he gets to the cottage gate,
His eyes are bright in the fading light
As he looks for his darling, Kate.
She hears the creak of the hinges greet
The one who captured her heart,
And races out through the cottage door,
Who am I, to keep them apart?

But the world is cruel and there’s always gruel
To add to a perfect tale,
I should be telling this up at the pub,
Over a pint of ale.
But I’d have to muddy my story up
To make my listeners tense,
And what does it take but a big brown snake
To add to the tale’s suspense.

The snake came slithering out of the herbs
And reared it’s head up high,
I could be mean with the following scene
As the snake bites Kate in the thigh.
But I’m only here to fill the page
Not to lay a ****** trail,
So Clive, alive to the danger leaps
To seize the snake by the tail.

Our hero takes the snake by the tail
And cracks it like a whip,
Shatters its spinal cord and so,
That was the end of it.
There’s a smiling face and a swift embrace
And a tale untold, for sure,
When Clive and Kate shut the creaky gate
And enter the cottage door.

I only wanted to tell a tale
To banish this page of white,
The page that mocks like a sly old fox
When I stare at it each night.
So take the story of Clive and Kate
Who live on top of the cliff,
And dream sweet dreams if your own life seems
Too bland, and think, ‘What if?’

David Lewis Paget

593

I think I was enchanted
When first a sombre Girl—
I read that Foreign Lady—
The Dark—felt beautiful—

And whether it was noon at night—
Or only Heaven—at Noon—
For very Lunacy of Light
I had not power to tell—

The Bees—became as Butterflies—
The Butterflies—as Swans—
Approached—and spurned the narrow Grass—
And just the meanest Tunes

That Nature murmured to herself
To keep herself in Cheer—
I took for Giants—practising
Titanic Opera—

The Days—to Mighty Metres stept—
The Homeliest—adorned
As if unto a Jubilee
’Twere suddenly confirmed—

I could not have defined the change—
Conversion of the Mind
Like Sanctifying in the Soul—
Is witnessed—not explained—

’Twas a Divine Insanity—
The Danger to be Sane
Should I again experience—
’Tis Antidote to turn—

To Tomes of solid Witchcraft—
Magicians be asleep—
But Magic—hath an Element
Like Deity—to keep—

419

We grow accustomed to the Dark—
When light is put away—
As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp
To witness her Goodbye—

A Moment—We uncertain step
For newness of the night—
Then—fit our Vision to the Dark—
And meet the Road—*****—

And so of larger—Darkness—
Those Evenings of the Brain—
When not a Moon disclose a sign—
Or Star—come out—within—

The Bravest—***** a little—
And sometimes hit a Tree
Directly in the Forehead—
But as they learn to see—

Either the Darkness alters—
Or something in the sight
Adjusts itself to Midnight—
And Life steps almost straight.

54

If I should die,
And you should live—
And time should gurgle on—
And morn should beam—
And noon should burn—
As it has usual done—
If Birds should build as early
And Bees as bustling go—
One might depart at option
From enterprise below!
’Tis sweet to know that stocks will stand
When we with Daisies lie—
That Commerce will continue—
And Trades as briskly fly—
It makes the parting tranquil
And keeps the soul serene—
That gentlemen so sprightly
Conduct the pleasing scene!

A grain of sand,
Once part of a desert dune,
Taken away by a windstorm,
Parted too soon

Regal was the life,
In the dune where I was born,
Unearthed now,
From my existence torn

A wandering gypsy,
I'm one with the wind,
From all my attachments,
Unhinged, unhinged

russets ides adorned
the fall branches
mellow were their tones
bespeaking of a rich vintage
of a summer past
warmest did come
thence it did depart
in fields and avenues  
where Rembrandt's
brush colored
the canvas in ruddy hues
autumn tones
did on a November wind
bring its rouge

As a kid i thought i was so bright
that my thoughts and eyes held candle to moonless nights
Big dreams slowing my memory like an over loaded android phone
Back then, dreaming was my sin, my only felony
But years and age walked me into reality
Then i realized, there is nothing wrong with dreaming
The only wrong therein is not waking up to live it.......