Long after a heated argument
With his wife in the afternoon,
Roger James had taken his angst
To nurse in the small, spare room.
She said he’d always lived in the past
But little he knew of today,
And what he knew had no further use
For the past had drifted away.

He said that the base of knowledge was
The things they learned from the past,
That all they knew in the modern day
Was built from the past, at last.
‘There’s not a single decision we make
That hasn’t been made before,
And a study of consequence, you’ll find
May stop us from going to war.’

‘You crazy man,’ was his wife’s response,
‘Your life is a pitiful lie,
What do you know of the price of milk
Or the cost of a shirt, tie-dye?
Does it matter that stamps were tuppence once
Or that petrol was three and six,
And what can enhance our lives today
From the knowledge you have of the Blitz?’

‘You trivialise the argument,
Your feet are stuck to the floor,
You’re lost to the thrill that knowledge brings,
You’ll never be able to soar!’
So he took his gloom to the attic room
And he lay on an old camp bed,
His mind was filled with a sense of doom
As images raced through his head.

He knew he’d never been practical,
He kept everything inside,
She’d thought he was a wonderful catch
When first he’d made her his bride.
But the gloss had gone as the world went on
He was gradually left behind,
Sat in a nook with a cosy book
While she burnt the chicken, and cried.

He lay and sent up a silent plea
To the stars and the universe,
‘If this is life in the present day,
Could the future be much worse?’
A crack appeared in the further wall
And a bell had tolled outside,
And when he walked back down to the hall
There was no sign of his bride.

Her things still lay where they’d lain before
But of her, there wasn’t a trace,
The house was still, in the world outside
No sign of the human race.
He walked awhile on the empty streets
Where the cars were parked, and still,
But nothing moved, not even a dog
As he walked up, over the hill.

The buildings seemed to be all intact
With a single change, he swore,
The date had changed on the city bank,
One after the day before,
Just a single day in the future, he
Was leading the human race,
They hadn’t arrived where he was at,
It was merely one day of grace.

He spends his time in the library
And walking the empty streets,
He knows they’ll never catch up with him
‘Til his wandering day’s complete.
But now he misses his wife and kin
And everything of that ilk,
So spends an hour of his future day
On the prices of gas and milk!

David Lewis Paget