‘I’m tired, so tired,’ said Jonathon Black,
‘I can hardly stay awake,’
His wife just stared at the back of his head,
Went back to her currant cake.
She’d heard it all a million times
Was bored with the things he’d say,
She wished he’d pack up his things, sometimes
And quietly go away.

But Jonathon sat in his bamboo chair
And stared at the world outside,
He used to be full of energy,
But something inside him died,
He lived in the shadows of tides and scenes
That were conjured behind his eyes,
The throwaway remnants of others dreams
He’d capture in tears and sighs.

He spent the afternoon nodding off
Then woke with a startled cry,
‘You wouldn’t believe what I saw just now,
Right out of a clear blue sky.
A shadow crept from the bushes there
And it killed young Andrew Deems,’
Giselle had tutted and shook her head,
‘Just one of your stupid dreams!’

The woods, a favourite lovers spot
Stretched out from their own back door,
Giselle would go with a basket there
Looking for mushroom spore.
‘I saw you out in the woods today
But nothing is what it seems,’
She turned and snapped at her husband’s back,
‘Just keep me out of your dreams!’

‘It isn’t a question of that,’ he said,
‘I can’t control what I see,
Wherever a person’s thoughts are at
They keep on coming to me.
Even the strangers that walk on past
Have secrets they send in beams,
You’d think that they would be safe from me
But I’m the waker of dreams.

Giselle had wandered off to the woods
With her basket held on high,
While Jonathon found and loaded his gun,
Went after her with a sigh,
He found her there in a shady nook
In a huddle with Andrew Deems,
‘I thought I’d warned you, often enough,
You didn’t believe, it seems!’

He shot the lad as he tried to run
Then dropped the gun to his side,
‘All I could see in his dreams was you,
But now, that dream has died.’
‘And what will you do with me,’ said she
And bit her lip ‘til it bled,
‘I’m tired, so tired,’ said Jonathon Black
Then put the gun to his head.

David Lewis Paget