Stalemate

I have no words, nor patterns left
To spill, my dear,
No facile quotes, no wisdom
To dispense,
Nor any careless answers at
My time of year
All that was lost, or sold,
Or buried, spent.

All gone; the well is dry, the depths
I tried to reach
Devoured me long before
I found you there,
I lent with empty gestures
What I thought to teach,
And questioned truth, if even truth
Could care.

So what is left; a feeling we
May not express,
While I doubt more and more
This arabesque,
That you find comfort now
More in my tardiness,
While I take heart at questions
You don't ask.

David Lewis Paget

Ships of Fortune

When all the threads are broken,
When all the vows are spent,
When every word that I've said or heard
Means only ... I repent!
When all the ships of fortune
Have sailed to a foreign strand,
I'll give my memories, every one
To hold you by the hand.

When yesterday's tomorrows
Hold nothing more for me,
And all my fate and fortune
Is lost in my imagery,
When every friend and favour
Has turned to walk away,
I'll watch you from my window
Act out the ragged play.

When all the futile speeches
We've made to each and all
In search of some dim purpose
To save us from the fall;
When all the futile speeches
Hang dust in the empty air,
I'll need you more than ever
To tend my dark despair!

David Lewis Paget

Ship to Shore

When you pulled at the wheel with me
To steer our fragile ship of state
We nosed toward uncharted seas
But found our course within a lake.

And every where that we did turn
There loomed another barren shore,
We turned, and then did turn about
To find we'd sailed each course before.

And you would chafe at each restraint
And I would rush to catch each squall
That filled our sails a little while
Before we lay becalmed once more.

Then you would see each distant point
As bearings, where your freedom lay
And drive our ship before the storm
For day upon each battered day.

'Til we had sailed on every course
That wit or will could still devise
While biting tongue and sharp retort
Became the language of our lives.

At every turn, a shallow reef
To wreck the hopes that we had shared,
Each tack would bring us near to grief
Each luff would leave us near despair.

But then you spied some promised ground
And took the boat on that same shore
That we had left together, once
Though never to return, we swore.

The ship of state rolled drunkenly,
I could not steer, nor go ashore
And so each watched the other weep
For you would cry, and I implore.

'Til you rowed back to join the ship
But we were fast upon some reef,
And soon you turned to carp and wit
To speed you on your long retreat.

A thousand times you made that trip,
A thousand times from ship to shore
But now the tide's exposed the rip,
There's nothing left to journey for.

And you may live your life ashore
While I attend some new design,
Our ship of state once went to war -
I burned her to the waterline.

David Lewis Paget

Sanctuary

If I had time to think
I think
That you and you
Would loom immensely
At this dream;
This wrecked and wracked wrong-headed,
Foot-sliding, step-staggering brink;

This theme.

If I had time, and time
Took time for me,
I'd turn back twenty years
Of pain and doubt,
Undoubtedly;
And make my major moves
Before the long regret
In deep and tardy shifts
Left love, each one, one by one
In limbo - stranded yet.

And if I had you still, despite
My instability
Who loved me, as you love only;
Intense and bent to still my battered sanctuary;
At greener hills beyond my brink,

Then...would I lose you still,
When life's inept insanity
Tugged at my coat
And bid me - drink?

David Lewis Paget

Theme for a New Daughter

You lie a-doze beneath a buttercup
That flowers at the cruel time of year,
To shine its yellow glow at cheek and lip
And celebrate your coming, at the hour.

While faeries trip, and leap, and dance abroad
Enchanted at each tiny fingertip,
They sprinkle stars to sparkle at each eye
And plant a crescent moon within each cheek.

While I, mere mortal man, will watch you pout
And smile and gurgle in your new content,
You crook your magic fingers at my dearth
And charm away the weary hours I've spent.

And work your new-found woman's wiles on me
Who should beware, or I may be undone,
What webs you weave, what spells, what sorcery;
My tiny witch, my faye, my Alison.

David Lewis Paget

Sonnet on Loss

You've gone again, and I sit granite faced,
Astare at this, the loss of my estate,
To count my grievings, seen as if afar
Through mist and hurt, and bramble patch and pain
Where life may only tear you at the briar
To leave blood-blackberry patches at the stain
Of every love, turned ash, or died, or went
Beyond the realm of touch, or argument.
So here I sit, and never look aside
But stare ahead, pretending life pretence,
And sleep, that blessed anaesthetic state
As life, but turned about by accident -
While I, unmoved, unmoving sit in fear
That grief will overwhelm me as I stare.

David Lewis Paget