My father lies in an orchard,
My mother lies at his side,
But once, a million years ago
He made that girl his bride.
And love was all that they knew back then
In that world of endless time,
They conjured me in a magic glen
And they shared their lives with mine.

But life is merely a dripping tap
With a leak that can’t be sealed,
And much as we’d like to take it back
Once lived, it can’t be healed.
It drips away through our laughter,
It drips away through our pain,
It slips away on our sunny days
And fills our gutters with rain.

We’ve seen where that grand horizon lies,
So far away for the young,
And seek to fill it with needs, and deeds
That never will be undone.
But while we’re chasing our dreams and schemes
Ignoring what we were told,
That life is merely a race to run
The people we love grow old.

And one by one they depart from us
Like a breath of wind in the trees,
With nothing to mark their passing now
But a stone in the cemetery.
The end of time comes to all of us
When that tap will cease its drip,
That dreaded death that will take your breath,
Your mind, and the rest of it.

And people say it’s a void that takes
Our memories, one by one,
My folk live on, though a long time gone
In the mind of this orphan son.
I sometimes sit, and I think of it
On the grey of their granite stone,
And weep for the years they’ve been asleep,
I’m a long, long way from home!

David Lewis Paget