A Blank Page Poem by David Lewis Paget

This page is white as a white can be
Til I lift my pen and trace
A scrawl of black from an inky sac,
A tale of the human race.
I pick and choose, who wins, who lose
Their brief duet with fate,
Who twist and turn as they live and learn
To dance at my garden gate.

I paint in the cliffs and the sky above,
The shingle, down on the shore,
A tiny cottage that’s full of love
With a garden of herbs, and more,
A man who walks on the winding path,
He’s a difficult man to gauge,
Will he be happy, or sad, or what
When I get to the end of the page?

I’ll call him Clive, for he’s so alive
When he gets to the cottage gate,
His eyes are bright in the fading light
As he looks for his darling, Kate.
She hears the creak of the hinges greet
The one who captured her heart,
And races out through the cottage door,
Who am I, to keep them apart?

But the world is cruel and there’s always gruel
To add to a perfect tale,
I should be telling this up at the pub,
Over a pint of ale.
But I’d have to muddy my story up
To make my listeners tense,
And what does it take but a big brown snake
To add to the tale’s suspense.

The snake came slithering out of the herbs
And reared it’s head up high,
I could be mean with the following scene
As the snake bites Kate in the thigh.
But I’m only here to fill the page
Not to lay a bloody trail,
So Clive, alive to the danger leaps
To seize the snake by the tail.

Our hero takes the snake by the tail
And cracks it like a whip,
Shatters its spinal cord and so,
That was the end of it.
There’s a smiling face and a swift embrace
And a tale untold, for sure,
When Clive and Kate shut the creaky gate
And enter the cottage door.

I only wanted to tell a tale
To banish this page of white,
The page that mocks like a sly old fox
When I stare at it each night.
So take the story of Clive and Kate
Who live on top of the cliff,
And dream sweet dreams if your own life seems
Too bland, and think, ‘What if? ’

20 March 2015