Would He Even Know Me Now? Poem by David Lewis Paget

The past is full of shades and shapes
Of people, come and gone,
'Whatever happened to so and so, '
We say, when the mood is on;
But closer still, our parents live
In the warmth of our hearts and minds,
And my father often returns to me
To haunt my quiet times.

How do you deal with a love so deep
That it tears your life apart?
The day that he left, he took a piece
Of my ever caring heart,
He died, and so did I that day,
But I couldn't even cry,
A loss so great to a fickle fate -
I wept, though my eyes were dry.

Though that was twenty years ago
I remember in every way,
He'll always be just the way he was
On that final, desperate day;
But I have changed, I'm older now
And life has never been kind,
The years have indelibly traced their path
On my face, my body and mind.

My father knew me way back when,
A child, a teen, young man,
I hovered around the forty mark
When he left in the Lord's great plan;
But one thing worries my troubled mind
And it haunts my thoughts somehow,
If we were to pass on the street today
Would he even know me now?

5 March 2008