Overboard

They’d all been swept to the beach and left

Like flotsam, after the storm,

Some were alive and some were dead

In that tragic scene, at dawn,

Their ship was lying submerged out there

While its mast still graced the sky,

Its time was brief on that unmarked reef,

Out where its bones would lie.

While those who had been swept overboard

Into a foam-fleck’d sea,

Were helpless, dashed by the giant waves

On rocks that they couldn’t see,

They tore the flesh from the living bone

And  crushed the skull as they hit,

The sea was turning a muddy red

With blood that was lost in it.

Then when the tide had come churning in

With its charnel bodies and bones,

Above the roar of the rabid shore

You could hear the first few moans,

A sailor lay with a broken arm

Another nursing his head,

And there a woman, so frail of form,

Who certainly should be dead.

She lay with her skirt around her waist,

Her legs were a mass of blood,

Dragged and tossed on a needle rock

She’d suffered more than she should,

But though she moaned she had looked around

As the bodies came floating in,

‘Where are you Alan A-Dell,’ she cried,

‘To lose you now is a sin.’

But Alan A-Dell was still out there

The waves would pummel and pound,

He had no thought of the girl that called

As he floated there, face down,

The love they’d shared was a mystery

That had held them wrapt in awe,

But now had passed into history

As he floated in, to the shore.

And Carmel cried as the rising tide

Kept sweeping the bodies in,

For Alan A-Dell now lay beside

The lover that once had been,

She thought of the final words he’d said

As they both jumped into the waves,

‘I pray, if there is a God above,

That you are the one he saves.’

And so she wept as she beat his chest

And railed at the living God,

‘Why take half of a love away

When a love takes two, that’s odd.’

The sun burst suddenly through the clouds

And it made the water gleam,

As Alan A-Dell had spluttered once

His body and life redeemed.

They clutched each other that livelong day

Alone on that charnel beach,

Everyone else had died, they lay

Where living was out of reach,

The night came down on that lonely shore

With no-one to help or care,

So shivered into the early hours

When suddenly, God was there.

He hadn’t taken a single love

She’d said that a love takes two,

So looking down from his place above

He knew what he had to do,

And when they died in each others arms

With their hearts within them stilled,

A love was taken, not one, but two,

With his grace, their love was sealed.

David Lewis Paget

Reviews

[Josie E. Cook M. A.]

A wonderful depiction of devotion to each other and the experience of loss.
Discovery and recovery inside your poem with strong feeling and emotion captured here.
Sad, but touching in the right places inside a tender heart.

[Roxie M]

When I read you, I think of having an ale to drink along with the music of you poems...This took another turn to tenderness and love and God and I was further blessed. I am becoming a fan.

[Samaira]

This is so beautiful. Such powerful imagery. It's sad. But you are sort of happy that they are together. Even in death.

[A Soap Mess Stories]

A sad yet heartwarming romantic love story...great work David.

[R Smith]

a sensational story David, by the grace of God they go on together, beyond hope of saving they die from wounds and the cold hard night but are reunited by the love of God, brilliant! :)

[Lady Lola]

You actually made me root for a man to come back from the dead just to die shortly after with his beloved. How very tragic but also incredibly sweet and romantic.

[Leslie Philibert]

David is rightly liked for his narrative poetry, always excellently written.

[Lyndy]

This is a nice poem! It's very touching. :D

[Marie]

I dont' see this quite as a tragedy. God blessed the couple after all, and one half will not have to go on without the other.