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here did I wander when I wandered alone under that whirling night sky lit by all the wildly winking, blinking and nearly shrieking lights of the carnival rides, the rides constituting the basis of my father’s financial empire?  As a little girl I navigated the midway often, alone and always easily.

Last night in my dream I followed the only music I heard toward the only ride operating – the carousel.  The music sounded like a waltz – I found myself counting out “1-2-3, 1-2-3” in my head – but a waltz with an Irish lilt or ‘tenor,’ if I may use that word generally.

What I found when I reached the edge of the circle of light thrown by the carousel left me choking back tears.  There, seated precariously on one of the horses, white it was, was my “Dark Man,” my poet.  I do not know how he held his seat as he was plainly exhausted.  He struggled visibly and in vain to open his eyes.  I heard him invoke the sun and I felt my heart break just a bit.

I stepped up onto the carousel carefully, but jolted to a stop when an angel at the top of the carousel addressed me.  I looped my arm around a tiger’s neck to keep my balance and stared up at the angel’s face looking down on me.  I blinked several times because, I kid you not, I think the angel had the face of a 21st century William Shakespeare!  I wasn’t certain what I was seeing or hearing and all I could say rather inanely was, “Excuse me?”

“I said, you sweet girl, ‘You found him.  That is very good.  He needs you.'”

“But … well … Can’t you do something?  He needs rest!  It’s obvious -”

He cut me off with enigmatic verses: “‘But what cared I that set him on to ride, I, starved for the bosom of his fairy bride’?”

When I asked why he, William Shakespeare, quoted the verse of another William, a 20th century William, William Butler Yeats, he merely smiled and lifted a brow.

Then the music of the carousel changed to the Beatles’ “Here Comes the  Sun” – my morning wake-up call.