Our Parting Ways

‘We must have entered the Latter Days

For the Moon has broken in two,’

Said Paul Maresh in the month of May

Of Twenty Twenty-two,

‘I said they shouldn’t be mining it

And drilling through to its core,

For now the Russians claim half of it

And the States have gone to war.’

 

‘That nuclear bomb on Ohio left

A crater, big as a lake,

And I heard that Lake Ontario

Has flooded New York State,

The world is shifting allegiances

So we don’t know where we are,

Since the Internet has crashed and burned

With my friends, both near and far.’

 

He went to the old style UHF

That he kept in his father’s shed,

Checked that the aerials were up

And the generator fed,

For the power had gone for the second time

And they said, it won’t be back,

With the power station the target in

That first, but brief attack.

 

He switched on channel 11 then,

Hoping to hear her voice,

Through shifting, drifting frequencies

He sat there, calling Joyce,

But all he got was a wailing call

To prayer, from a Dervish man,

Sent out to all of the faithful from

Some place in Pakistan.

 

He checked through all of the channels that

They’d used, back there in the past,

But mostly got a cracklng sound

From the swirling, nuclear ash,

His sister Joyce, having flown on out

To the States in the month before,

He thought was missing in Florida,

In the first week of the war.

 

Then a voice came through on channel three

That was lost, and fraught with pain,

‘Is that the Paul Maresh I met

In June, on the Sydney train?’

His mind went back to the smiling girl

With the drawn out Texas drawl,

Who’d chatted, stolen his heart away

With her laughed, ‘Be seein’ Y’all!’

 

They’d kept in touch on the Internet

And she said she was coming back,

Preparing to give their love a fling

On some great Australian track.

But then the world had shuddered with

That first American bomb,

So now, as frequencies swirled, he said,

‘Where are you calling from?’

 

He thought that she said from ‘Boston’, though

A crackle had interfered,

Maybe the word was ‘Austin’ back

In Texas, that he’d heard,

But then her voice was carried away

In a trans-pacific hum,

And the last few words he heard, she said

‘I really love you, hun!’

 

Part of the Moon has crashed to earth

In the Gulf of Mexico,

With Texas drowned in a sea of mud

And the earth’s rotation slowed,

But Paul Maresh in the Aussie Bush

Is clamped to the UHF,

Looking for Joyce and Linda if

It takes him his final breath.

 

David Lewis Paget

 

Reviews

[Marie]

If people keep drilling and drilling and drilling, the Apocalypse is sure to come. We've come to such a point in technology that if the Internet crashes it's sure to be the end of us.

Ah, I can vaguely remember the days of steam-driven TV sets...

You are already two poems ahead of me and rapidly speeding toward y our goal.

[A Soap Mess Stories]

If you keep going like this...you'll hit your next 1,000 in no time...keep up the good work...

[Tate Morgan]

Just had to drop that one on Ohio didn't you. Well I guess with Wright Patt Air force base here and all the alien stuff hidden underground We would be one of the first. So if It looks like the end is near and you hear a knock at the door. Just leave the key under the mat I 'll know what it's there for.

[Avinash]

This love affair has got everything going around it. But all love stories have the same affect on the lovers.
We would require a huge budget to turn this poem into a movie. Did I mention that most of your work I feel like can be turned into movies, wish I had money to produce though :)

[R Smith]

guess this is the parting ways alright David, as apocalyptic tales go this just about blows the others out of the water, almost literally, you may have created a future conspiracy theory, for us end timers, thanks, great work :)

[Barbz]

The title made me sad...for when you think of parting ways...I guess because I've been there once some years ago some days. The state of many unions, is not determined yet and thoughts of having naught in terms of the internet. How do we trust the "faithful" and the message they might spew....for who of us really knows what the world is coming to. In my mind's ear I hear the the fraught and sadness of this voice......I'm sure that it is coming from the heart and soul of Joyce......Reading you time after time, brings out my resilience because I can't resist your never failing brilliance. Barbz

[Valentine]

Naturally we would be the one to drop the bomb. If you are bombing Ohio and flooding the Great Lakes,,you just lost me as I do not swim very well. You are an amazing writer..I wish I had some of these tales to tell..You just keep them coming..Kathie

[MomzillaNC]

This is really a startling post-apocalyptic view! Chilling. Wow, David… just Wow!