Mr Pettigrew

Too late we come to realise,
There’s some folk take you by surprise,
Like my friend Mr Pettigrew,
A friend whom I once thought I knew.
Made his fortune in the city,
Had a wife so young and pretty,
Two children who were fair and bonny,
Oh what a life of milk and honey.
Flash cars and mansion on the hill,
There was no dream he’d not fulfil.
Yet though the world seemed at his feet,
Should you pass him in the street,
He'd smile and doff his hat and say,
‘Hello and how are you today?’
Hence everyone who knew him said,
That money’s not gone to his head,
A finer man you’ll never see,
A thing that we could all agree.
So what a shock it was to me,
To find him hanging from a tree,
As dead as any man can be,
A man who asked us how we fared,
A man who truly, truly cared
The notion came to me, quite grim,
We’d never asked the same of him,
And because we hadn’t thought to ask it,
Mr Pettigrew lies in his casket.