"Dad!  DAD!"
The cry shakes the night
Shakes sleep from his father's eyes,
and spirits him to his side.

Sweating and trembling the boy points
to the corner of the room.
"There," he whispers, "right there!"

The father turns, befuddled, impatient
and sees nothing.
"You're okay.  It was a bad dream.
Lie down.
Night
             night."

But it wasn't a bad dream.
In the corner of the room
is a huge, glowing
                                       egg.
Light pulses from it
in living waves,
and his father must be blind to miss it.

Night after night.
"It's nothing.
Go back to sleep."

But night after night
the egg gets bigger,
and dad
               gets
                        smaller.

"Haw!  You!  Come back here!
Dinny walk aff while ah'm talkin ti ye!
Didjiz no ken we won a fight
a mere sivvin hunner year ago?
Are ye no impressed?"

Flower o' ****** Scotland.
Fighting and dying
for a wee bit hill and glen.
When will we see the like?
Every ****** day
an' Ah'm ******* seek o't.

See when we start lovin and livin
fur a wee bit hill and glen?
Then Ah'll get tae ma feet
an sing.

The real you went walking leaving me with someone else
We sat around and chatted telling lies about ourselves
For only killing time it didn't matter what was true
As we waited for the real you

Minutes turned to hours turned to days and turned to weeks
Nothing left to say but still we felt the urge to speak
The one who took your place began to grow, she grew and grew
As we waited for the real you

The real me went looking, sadly I was left behind
To formulate opinions and pretend a state of mind
We thought of words that matter, of love and hope and trust
As we waited for the real us

So here we are and here we're wasting time on what we've lost
Our real selves a notion from a disappearing past
And even though we wouldn't know them if they ever came
We'll go on waiting for them just the same

In early days, man strode
beneath wide wild skies
reading the landscape with understanding eyes,
forgetting the paths of the women and children.
Wood and hill he paced,
silent, stealthy, alone,
solitude his defence against idleness,
solitude the means by which the Earth spoke to him,
and the state in which experience, memory and thought
bred music, poetry and story.

Times change, of course
and I begrudge not one second
in your company.
But if I willingly submit
to being sounding board for your day's plans;
to being a climbing frame for the boys,
or to answering the question,
"What are you doing?" with smiling candour,

Then perhaps you can forgive me
if I happen to spend
more time than you
in the one room in the house
with a lock on the door.