I wonder if any of you are poor sleepers? I can't remember a time when I really slept well without any help from some sort of sleeping draught. To get through the many wakeful hours of the night I make up stories and compose poems in my head. The one you will see today is about an aunt, Aunty Anne, I made her up and she comforts me with her wise words and often sends me to sleep. As Shakespeare said in The Tempest :...."we are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is
rounded with a sleep.'
My Tenant
Aunty Anne
lives in my head
sits in a comfortable
velvet armchair
she is a wise woman
plump with a pretty face
wears a white lacy blouse
a long patchwork skirt
has her hair in a bun
she smells of lavender water,
face powder and barley sugars
and she gives me
good advice,
away with miserable
thoughts at night,
she says, think
of the sunshine,
the sea, characters you love in books,
then she puts
her arms around me
kisses my cheek,
murmurs she loves me
and all will be well
and it is,
I sleep.
*
From Dorothy Wordsworth's journal, in Somerset, January 26th, 1798
'Walked upon the hill-tops; followed the sheep tracks till we overlooked the large coombe. Sat in the sunshine. The distant sheep-bells, the sound of the stream, the woodman winding along the half-marked road with his laden pony; locks of wool still spangled with the dew-drops; the blue-grey sea, shaded with immense masses of cloud, not streaked; the sheep glittering in the sunshine.'
*
Very best wishes, Patricia
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