I met myself on a winding path
With the beach ten yards away,
Walking slowly towards me then
By the pounding breakers spray,
The path was narrow, I stepped aside
As I felt a twinge of fear,
We both were startled, I heard us say,
‘What are you doing here?’

I looked at me as I must have been
At the age of thirty-one,
And I was visibly shaken, seeing
Just how the years had gone,
‘I’m not quite how I envisaged me,
Were the years ahead so hard?’
I felt a chill and replied to me,
‘I was hoist on my own petard.’

‘What has become of our hopes and dreams,
The ones that we must have shared?’
‘I let them slip through my fingers, once
I noticed that no-one cared.’
‘I always said that I’d have to fight
For the things that I held dear,’
‘But the years have changed, and rearranged
For none of those things are here.’

With one last look at each other, we
Then parted and turned away,
I to a desperate future,
And me to my dying day,
The I then turned that was thirty-one
‘Can you tell what happened to She?’
I couldn’t remember the one I meant,
‘She’s certainly not with me!’

David Lewis Paget