I’m sitting here in the morning glow
Of the early winter sun,
Staring at the picture of you
And wondering what I’ve done,
You left to go on a shopping trip
In the middle of the week,
You said that you’d be an hour away
Was the last I heard you speak.

I’m used to you never turning up
So I knew I’d have to wait,
I’ve often taken a chair out there
To sit by the garden gate,
The sun went down and the Moon came up
There was still no sign of you,
And when I crawled upstairs I saw
That the bed was empty too.

I wondered what you were shopping for
As it’s true, you never tell,
You might be looking for pitchforks from
The seventh circle of hell,
You come back home with the strangest things
Like a bag of knitted straw,
And once with a dozen rubber rings
What did you want them for?

A day went by and I rang around,
Caught up with your friend Denise,
Checked with the local hospital,
With the Firemen and the Police,
But nobody knew just where you were
Or at least, they wouldn’t say,
Constable Gurk suppressed a smirk
Said you might have run away.

Somebody said that you’d passed them by
In a number fourteen bus,
Another one said, they don’t know why,
You were seen with Uncle Gus.
I knew all along that must be wrong
Though I don’t know why they lied,
They must have been seeing things, it’s been
A year since my Uncle died.

So now I’m left with a mystery
It’s already been a week,
I’ve been so alone, all on my own
I’m forgetting how to speak.
I’d never have thought you’d want to leave
I thought that our love was true,
I’ve just had a call, you’d not believe,
They found you, locked in the Zoo.

David Lewis Paget