My dad was a prince, but was painfully poor.
Creditors crept and kept knocking his door.
So fled underground to free coal from its seams.
Became a coal miner and dreamer of dreams.
My mum was a maiden, from Mercia she hailed.
A beautiful princess, voluptuously veiled.
She laughed when they named her: a mother to be.
\'With child\' in a sweatshop; she’d soon be set free!
My dad was a singer; he played the guitar.
When not down the bookies, or drunk in a bar,
He’d jam with his cousin; they\'d started a band.
They cut their first single; dad called it, ‘Dreamland!’
My mum, she got married, when loving bore fruit.
Said, dad looked outrageous dressed up in a suit.
My mum, she seemed sassy, all wayward and wild.
Her heart though was warming, with love for her child.
My dad said he’d raise me like one of his own.
A boy bent on poetry, dad’s little clone.
A child of his dreaming, who’d do well at school.
Like scholar or poet, not featherbrained fool.
My mum and dad whispered, but sometimes they’d shout.
My mum shouted loudest, ‘bout dreams she did doubt!
Dad sometimes grew solemn; he hadn’t been well.
His troublesome symptoms to doctor he’d tell.
My mum made her mind up; dad had to retire.
With mining from morning till night he’d expire!
But fates they were calling; their fingers had writ.
So dad said he might as well stay down the pit.
My dad died that summer, at age thirty nine.
Last eyes clapped upon him, I think they were mine.
As child of his dreaming, I’d started to see
Dad’s dying was making a poet of me!
My mum went on breathing when dad’s breath had fled.
She wept like a widow alone in her bed.
Her dream, like her dreamer, to spite her, had died.
A cross now she carried: “I’m coping,” she lied.