Yesterdays Lost Poem by David Lewis Paget

It seems it was only yesterday
I was just on twenty-three,
Feeling my way in the world out there
‘Til you distracted me,
I looked aside for a moment, saw
That you had been, and gone,
And found I had wasted fifty years
For I couldn't remember one.

That life is merely a shadow now
So why did you have to leave,
I can't remember just what went wrong
Or what I hoped to achieve,
I thought that time was forever then
And I took my eyes from the clock,
I lived in the land of make-believe
Where the tick had stopped with tock!

Your face is lost to my memory
Your words are buried in time,
I only know there was someone there
Who played with my heart and mind,
Our love was lost in a well of tears
That made our pillows rot,
We wasted time on our hopes and fears,
Whether you left, or not.

There must be somebody else out there
Who's stealing another's time,
Who lives their life in a shadow, when
They could be alive in mine,
I'd like to retrieve those fifty years
And I think that you'll agree,
They could be happy and carefree years
But they wouldn't be spent with me!

11 February 2013