you know I slept
twenty years
and woke to find
all things changed


when I sleep now,
though only a few hours
each night,
I wonder
if it had not been better
if I had slept forever


I had not known
trouble in my long sleep;
and I was not bewildered
by a world
that is strange and distant
though I move in it all day long


I had not known
any care or worry;
nor had I to think where
my next meal was to come from
or hang over things like
what today's contemporaries
fret about:
things like retirement funds
and aged care; and a will
that will be ample and fair


I had not known
people of strange ways
when I slept;
I had not to condone
the conceited and those whose
only concern is self-interest;
and men and women of twisted emotion
and hell-bent on ****** and blood
and lust;
and a lawn that must be trimmed


and in my bear-sleep
I had no encounter
with the fool, the arrogant, the ambitious
and the tyrant and the greedy;
all I knew in my long sleep
was quiet, oblivion and bliss
and so I ask myself often
as I sit in the shade of the tree:
*I wonder
if it had not been better
if I had slept forever?