The Last Day

The earth had not been breathing

For an hour when I woke,

So the thought that I’d be leaving 

Any time, became a joke,

There was not that faintest rustle

That we think to call a breeze,

When the leaves all rub together with

The swaying of the trees,

And the water lay in stagnant pools

Across the dying ground,

Where there once had flowed a river but

Its stream could not be found.

There was silence where there once had been

The babble of a creek,

If the earth turned on its axis now

That day took half a week,

And where the tide had used to turn,

Advance upon the land,

Its waves had ceased to function

All it left was drying sand,

If that was not enough, its dearth

Reflected in the sky,

In clouds dark brown like bracken

That would crackle up on high.

These clouds of louring thunder merely

Muttered in their pain,

And sent the flash of lightning down

But dry, and without rain,

And nothing that was living stirred

Within my line of view,

Not even what I should have heard

And so, I turned to you.

For there across the counterpane

Your lustrous hair was spread,

And all my world became insane

To know that you were dead.

David Lewis Paget

Reviews

[zunie frost]

sad but really soft and attractive at the same time . it makes your poem special .
keep writing

[Einstein Noodle]

oh my goodness ...such a dirge ..i was captivated in reading ...how different a "silence " can sound ...when all is well and so many sounds are in movement in the forests it contains a blessed stillness ..the silence of bleak and dismay screams inside but outside it really is silent ..very different voice Sir Paget! well done ... i am inspired to plant a seed today ... flowers perhaps
E.

[Tomás Ó C..]

Such a beautiful and sad verse...