Sleep Walking

This stiff-upper-lip voice

floating at me

through my radio

this upper-class British voice

that I alternately envy and deride

describing new research

into the incidence of sleep-walking

and one of the symptoms

one of the ways you can tell

is by the victim's (?) GLAZED EYES

Is that how?

Could be my life is one

whole sleep-walking experience.

And he goes on to say

it's a fallacy, they don't die of shock

if precipitately

brought out of their sleep-walking

and goes on to give an example

of some woman who had an 'unfortunate'

tendency to sleep-walk

in the wee hours of the morning

- naked - and that's

how her husband invariably discovered her

walking the streets, naked.

"It distressed her husband enormously"

the voice said. Well, yes it would.

But women are like that

always dreaming of

walking the streets

though few of us do it

naked

and fewer yet

die of mortification when

precipitately brought to reality.

 c.1979