He’d lain in the septic, hospital bed,
Was terminal, slipping away,
‘He won’t last forever,’ the nurses said,
‘Will probably go today.’
So they put him on a morphine drip
To ease the man of his plight,
‘He looks so grey, and is on his way,
I think he’ll be dead tonight.’

But deep in the slumbering fellow’s head
There wasn’t a shred of gloom,
A party was raging within his bed,
And filling that hospital room,
There were friends and folk he’d always known,
A neighbour he knew as Jim,
And there in a party dress, on her own,
That wonderful girl called Kim.

Would she even give him a second glance
He’d thought, in a sort of dread,
He’d seen her first at the village dance,
And now she was deep in his head.
Her lips were full and her eyes were brown
And her teeth were even and white,
He thought that his courage might let him down
Then swore, ‘she’ll be mine tonight.’

He nodded his head to a favourite tune
As tremors invaded his pillow,
Balloons were popping all through the room,
He stood by a favourite willow,
And Kim was paddling in the brook
That bubbled and babbled, madly,
He took a breath and a long last look,
He knew that he wanted her badly.

She turned and smiled, and walked to his bed,
And gave her lips to be kissed there,
She shimmered and swayed as his vision fled
And he stood alone by her grave there,
His smile was soft as the lights went out
And a nurse looked over him gravely,
‘At last he’s gone, I knew him as John,
He went to the other side bravely.’

They stripped his bed and they laid him out,
‘I remember his wife,’ one sighed,
‘Her name was Kim, and she doted on him,
It must be a year since she died.’
‘Who knows what happens to those who pass,’
A nurse said, folding the sheeting,
‘I’d like to think they’re together at last,
If just for a moment, fleeting…’

David Lewis Paget