The Buried Past Poem by David Lewis Paget

The Buried Past



The photos lay in a pile of dust
They'd gathered under the bed,
They'd not seen the light of day for years
Were neglected there, instead,
The wife found them with the first spring clean
And she dumped them in my lap,
‘Who is the girl on the Honda Dream,
And the guy in the leather cap? '

I must have shot her a funny look
As we guys are wont to do,
‘A girl I must have been going with
About twenty before you.'
She picked the photo out of the pile
And she brushed it on her skirt,
I thought, ‘Oh, here we go again, '
Her face said she was hurt.

‘How come I've never seen her before, '
She was getting close to tears,
I snatched the photo out of her hand,
‘It must be fifty years!
I can't recall the time or the place
And I can't recall her name.'
She punched me once on the shoulder, said:
‘You ought to be ashamed! '

That photo sat on the mantelpiece
And it stared at me for weeks,
A bonny girl with a pouting lip
And the wife gave me no peace.
It was, ‘Just what did you talk about?
What did she used to say? '
I said, ‘I can't for the life of me
Remember a single day.'

She served the hot-pot up stone cold
And the gravy didn't move,
I think she mixed it with concrete just
To show she didn't approve.
I said, ‘I was only twenty then,
That snap was way back when,
We've been together for forty years,
Why drag her up again? '

‘You've kept her a secret all these years,
That photo, under the bed,
How do I know you're not in touch? '
I said, ‘She's probably dead! '
I racked my brains for a memory
But all I could see were thighs,
Pert young breasts and a petticoat
And a twinkle in her eyes.

But still I couldn't recall her name
Or a single word she'd said,
Only the scent of her sweet young breath
As we rolled in her parents bed,
She'd clung to me on the pillion seat
As her skirt flared out, and streamed,
Down at the back of Fletcher's Wood
On the back of the Honda Dream.

‘I want to know what you did with her,
Though it doesn't matter now.'
(I'd fallen for one of those tricks before,
The wife's a devious cow!)
I thought of the day the fun had gone
When we lay, looked up at the sky,
‘Ah, now I remember what she said,
One word, just one… Goodbye! '

23 October 2014

Thursday, October 23, 2014
Topic(s) of this poem: humour
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David Lewis Paget

David Lewis Paget

Nottingham, England/live in Australia
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