I’m tired right now, as my journey carries on.
My head is spinning, like it’s filled up with sludge.
I try to lift my feet but they hardly seem to budge.
I haven’t seen a village for a week,
I’ve been stranded all alone with no one whom to speak.
In the distance I hear people sing,
And village church bells start to ring,
But then, again, I fall asleep,
And when I wake up the village is no more,
And I lie there like an old rag dropped on the floor.
Devon is the place where I come in my dreams,
My favourite destination at night,
But now I’ve arrived, it doesn’t seem right.
To my left is a hedge and it’s catching on fire,
So they’ll dig it up and plant a fence made of wire.
This beautiful landscape is decaying in front of my eyes,
And yet no one seems to realise
That this Devon is not Heaven, it’s just Paradise.
I run from this track to a stream of cool water,
And start swimming around
Searching for the farmer’s daughter.
I cannot see her, yet her perfume I can smell,
And I hear her voice ringing like a church bell.
She is here, yet nowhere to be found,
And so in my opinion,
I conclude that she has drowned.

I run from the stream and jump over a stile,
Trip over my feet, then land in a pile.
I’m going nowhere, of that I’m sure,
And my feet are bleeding so badly I can’t run any more.
‘This is Paradise lost, as the old saying goes’,
I think to myself whilst nursing my toes,
And around me the forest grows and grows.
Soon I am submerged in trees and leaves;
The branches climb around my neck, I find it hard to breathe,
And so, like Edmund Hilary, I start to climb,
To reach the forest peak.
Up I go from branch to branch,
I no longer feel weak.
In fact, at last, I feel quite strong,
And so my climb goes on and on,
Until I’m standing above the clouds,
Four or five miles high,
In my little treetop in the sky.
The farmer’s daughter is with me now,
She wasn’t really dead,
So on the treetop we both lie down,
We’re the proud owners of the world’s tallest bed.



© 2000 Matt Everett