Follow Me Now! Poem by David Lewis Paget

They'd played together since they were young,
They'd grown through puppy love,
Both Michael Merrill and Cathy Powers
Were love-matched, from above.
He'd played the man in their tender dreams
And she, submissive girl,
She'd followed where he had blithely led
In a harsh and a cruel world!

As teens they'd necked in the Oldsmobile,
And he'd French-kissed her there,
He'd always wanted to go too far
'Til she had no blush to spare,
They merged together on leather seats
To make just one from the whole,
He came like a thief in the night to her
As her innocence, he stole!

He liked the way that she leaned on him,
Destroyed her 'will', and 'won't',
She only had timid questions left
To his answers, and his - 'Don't! '
She felt sublime in his comforting arms
And protected from the world,
But the death of their love had stirred within
Unknown to the simple girl!

She woke up sick by the Morning Star,
Felt bilious all the time,
He took her along to a doctor who
Unsettled his troubled mind:
'The baby should be along in March! '
He blanched, as the girl had smiled,
Then hurriedly talked abortion while
His Cathy had sat and cried!

The motherly instinct of her race,
Rose up, and lodged in her throat,
She suddenly found what 'will' she had,
The 'will' that would say: 'I Won't! '
She said that he'd have to marry her,
Her father had joined in,
So Michael had wed his childhood pal
But resentment was setting in!

The child came between the two of them,
Took most of her precious time,
'Whatever happened to me and you, '
He said, 'to the me and mine? '
'The two is suddenly three, ' she said,
'The you and me is 'Us! '
But Michael had fretted and turned away,
There were things that he wouldn't discuss.

The years went on and he had affairs,
She would always take him back,
Whenever he landed flat on his face
She'd be there with a cold ice-pack,
He lost his job and she went to work,
She saved them from distress,
But Michael was less than potent now,
And he beat his son to death!

She found him hung from a garage beam,
A note was pinned to the chair,
'You've always followed my every word,
Now follow me, if you dare! '
She tied a rope to the self-same beam,
And placed it around her neck,
He couldn't escape her love, it seemed,
Not even by choosing death!

9 August 2010