The phrase ‘The One that got away’ has been going round and round in my head for a few days now. And this morning, this popped out. Tissues at the ready, it made me blub copiously writing it, which is no bad thing.
The One that Got Away
I dreamed me a dream just the other day
Of lovers and angels who’d returned to say
The reasons they’d left me
To be the ones that got away.
First came cousin Margaret
My closest friend at play
Though 12 years separated us
We saw each other most every day
For my very first 4 years in life’s long lilting play
I proposed that we marry
On my eighth birthday
She smiled and said gently
‘Well maybe we may
If your love for me endures till a long distant day’
Then she married a footballer
On a dull dismal day
I was happy for her, at the end of the day
But still when I listened, I heard a voice say
This is just a temporary setback
She’ll be back someday
And sure enough in a few years her marriage gave way
Her husband was caught red-handed in play
With the young woman she trusted
To babysit when they were away
I think that I cried to hear her sad news
Well we all did that day, we all had the blues
When Margaret walked out and came back to stay
With her heart and her mind in complete disarray
Then, soon after my brother he too went away
Quite why I still don’t know, and can’t really say
But I do know that day left me totally bereft
My partner in crime had been taken by theft
Twas a miserable midwinter morning that day
Twas quite foggy and chilly, drizzly and grey
We waited to cross over a busy highway
An old man with a lollipop easing our way
Then a squeal of brakes from an unseen car
And a sickening thud as he went too far
And screaming kids, it was quite bizarre
And a glimpse of a broken doll that would scar
My life from right then and for many a day
Oh Malcolm, my brother, why did you stray?
But time heals all things the people all say
And so I was I left to find my own way
Out of the darkness, like an abandoned stray
No help or support offered, such was the way
They said it was best for me, back in the day
Then 2 years on, Margaret was dating again
And immediately lucked out and found a good man
Well I have to admit, that wasnt my plan
So the 12-year old manchild swallowed his pain
As his sweetheart went off and left him again
But Jim was a good ‘un, that much was plain
He was happy to see she was happy again
Jim and Margaret were blessed, she was such a good wife
They grew vegetables in Cornwall, just like ‘The Good Life’
But stormclouds were forming, and trouble and strife
Were all set to dash them, on the rocks they call life
For sadly, poor Margaret discovered a lump
And went to her doctor, who gave her the hump
Her worst fears confirmed, she crashed down with a bump
And her life was extinguished and consigned to the dump
But we who remain still remember her smile
Her elegant beauty, her feminine guile
And I would move mountains or walk a long mile
Just to see her again, and talk for a while
I dreamed me a dream just the other day
Of lovers and angels who’d returned to say
The reasons they’d left me
To be the ones that got away
But in truth and good conscience
I think its fair to say
That they never left me, nor went away
For they live in me now to fight another day
Copyright Ian Cropton 6th June 2015
Dedicated to my cousin Margaret Florence Murphy and my brother Malcolm Robert Cropton. May they Rest in Peace
Very moving Ian, but I enjoyed reading it, thank you.
The past continues to give us so much…It is perhaps who and what we are, it carries us as much as we carry it.
eeyorntails 
Very moving Ian, but I enjoyed reading it, thank you.
The past continues to give us so much…It is perhaps who and what we are, it carries us as much as we carry it.
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