The Wood Of Forgotten Deeds Poem by David Lewis Paget

I'd been depressed for a year or so
For the way ahead was grim,
Each venture failed left a legacy
That had said, ‘You can't come in!
No smell of sweet success for you
But the canker of despair,
Don't hope for wealth or accolades
In your life, they're just not there.'

My wife took off with a businessman
That I once had called a friend,
I hadn't known what was going on
‘Til she left me, in the end,
The lure of money and trinkets turned
Her face from a dismal past,
And her one delight was to scorn me then
When her love failed, at the last.

I often thought that I'd end it then
When my world was black as pitch,
When the future promised more of the same
In some unforgiving ditch,
I wondered why it had chosen me
This fate, with its barren seeds,
But came at last to the truth, I found
The Wood of Forgotten Deeds.

I'd travelled far from the paths of men
To nurse my hurts on my own,
Squatted in many a ruined house
And wandered at night, alone,
I came at length to a valley where
No man had laid his hand,
And a wood had covered the valley floor
Since the dawn of time began.

Rain had driven me into the wood
To shelter among the trees,
And a mood of some despair had grown
As it forced me to my knees,
My mind lit up with a thousand things
That littered my wayward past,
And every tree cried out to me:
‘Each sin is nailed to your mast! '

The things that I was ashamed of
I had pushed them away from me,
Hidden them in my subconscious so
They wouldn't keep bothering me,
But in this wood was a memory
Of everything mean and grim,
The things I'd tried to forget were there
And forced me to take them in.

The petty slights and injustices
That I'd scattered, far and wide,
The friends that I'd turned my back on
When it was just a question of pride,
I'd never thought of the consequence
For them, or who I had hurt,
But blithely left in my ignorance
The ones I'd left in the dirt.

And then I came to a vision
That had haunted me, on and off,
A girl that had gone to prison
I could have saved if I'd cared enough,
I'd left her pregnant and wanting there
So she'd stolen food for the child,
The magistrate said, ‘Fifteen months! '
The thing that I'd done was vile.

A fit of remorse came over me
And I wept and wailed in the wood,
My fate was suddenly clear to me
I'd only got what I should!
I'd never bothered to see the child
Or see to its tender needs,
But thanked the spirit that came to me
In the Wood of Forgotten Deeds.

I travelled back and I found the girl
And I begged for a second chance,
She said she had nothing but hate for me
But we finally found romance,
My life came out of that darker place,
I see to all of their needs,
She's my Sun, my Moon and Stars, I thank
The Wood of Forgotten Deeds!

21 November 2012