Willoughby
I got the germ of this one some time ago after watching the old Twilight Zone episode “A Stop At WIlloughby”. I started writing it but got stuck and put it away for a while. Yesterday I had a free day and decided to try working on it again, and again I got stuck. I was trying to write a song about the Twilight Zone WIlloughby and it just wasn’t happening.
Then I decided to look at it from a different angle – what does Willoughby look like to me?
The dam burst. Several hours, a lot of tears and half a box of Kleenex later I had this song.
I suspect most people who have gotten to “my age” have a Willoughby of their own. It’s part Oz, part Fern Hill and – in my case – part Pipsqueak Pond.
Lyrics:
There’s a place I’ve often visited
With warm and tranquil days
Where pressures of the life I lived
Were replaced by simpler ways
Though I try so hard to play my part
And be who I must be
I find my thoughts echoing back
To a place called Willoughby.
There’s a longing buried deep inside
Sometimes comes to me in dreams
For gentleness – a slower pace
For quiet and serene
A secluded pond where maples shade
And rustle softly in the breeze
Near Shatford’s end, my faithful friend
Still patiently waits for me
Maybe – like Oz, it isn’t real
Just a memory of a place I used to be
Is the place beyond Fern Hill
Waiting for me still
Could it be a stop at Willoughby
my restless thoughts, to memory bring
A whispered destination
Where sunlight streams through golden leaves
Of autumn’s adoration
If I close my eyes I can see it still
When my days were young and free
Oh, my heart still yearns, can I still return
To the place I call Willoughby?
Maybe – like Oz, it isn’t real
Just a memory of a place I used to be
Is the place beyond Fern Hill
Waiting for me still
Could it be a stop at Willoughby
Now the desert is bathed in sunlight
Empty sky – as wide as the sea
The days of mid June herald monsoon
To Quench the thirst of the Palo Verde
A different portrait than I can remember
Not the place that I knew years ago
But I think I still see – he’s still waiting there for me
In the same sunset’s warm afterglow
Maybe – like Oz, it’s only real
Beyond the shores of time and memory
In the place beyond Fern Hill
Living in me still
A place called…
Willoughby