I’m hot on the tail of a poem’s trail
To discover what makes it tick,
For the ones I receive in the daily mail
Are always giving me stick.
I don’t want the ones with a ******-probe
That go ravelling into my brain,
Or a moody muse with a too short fuse
They only generate pain.

When I spot one bearing a carefree lilt,
A rhythm that echoes my heart,
Or a rhyme scheme pairing a seem with dream,
We’re off to a flying start.
It gallops ahead of me, feeling its way
Through words that it finds by chance,
And makes it plain that it wants to play
In the meadows of assonance.

So I chase it over a babbling brook
On a cliché, rhyme or hook,
And still the breeze that will rhyme with trees
Turns the pages of my book.
I search for characters, sweet young girls
And for ladies, fair of face,
Who dance along with the poem, twirl
In the aftermath of grace.

While men, the heroes of quests and seas
Marooned on a distant shore,
Will take the poem to where they please,
You’ve never been there before.
And they meet the girls with the hair like corn,
Are trapped in their sparkling eyes,
They come together in winter storm
And all that you hear are sighs.

For the poem gives, and the poem takes
It will lull you, thrill you, dance,
From its wedding bells to its funeral wakes
It will still you, fill, entrance!
Its magic lies in its rhyme and scheme
As it weaves a recurring spell,
It nestles into your heart and dreams
Like an Olde Tyme Wishing Well.

And when it finally comes to stand
On the shore of a timeless lake,
As the book slips out of your listless hand
It whispers, ‘Are you awake?’
Then I spring to life and I seize it then,
And give to its tail a twist,
‘I’m still the poet, I hold the pen,’
I write, in the evening mist!

David Lewis Paget