Skeeter Davis In Drummore Poem by jim hogg

You could have been my Patsy Cline.
You had your hair done in her style.
The same dark eyes and there you stood,
all dressed in grey and singing lines
from 50s songs that still were cool,
way back in nineteen seventy four,
in the upstairs lounge in Drummore.

The place was packed and I was sat
beside your mother and your dad.
You only sang three songs that night -
enough to keep them coming back -
then took your seat tight by my side.
It's strange to watch it all from here,
so far away but yet so clear.

For fifteen months I held your hand,
and find it hard to understand,
the choices that I made back then.
I never really had a plan.
Life came along and I was swept,
so far away I lost all sight
of what most mattered in my life.

And drifted on 'til eighty six,
until I saw you drinking with
your husband in the long closed Club;
complete with silver threads and rings,
and saw it all then, clear enough,
as if I'd been transported back
with every memory intact.

It took a while to work it through:
I once tried dancing next to you,
then drove along Mount Vernon hill,
but there was nothing I could do:
you'd moved on and your life was filled
with all the things that you'd once sought,
and would have had, 'til I forgot.

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