Sheila Charles SLEEP
Do you ever wonder
How long other people use to get to sleep?
Or what tactics they use to get to sleep –
Exercise, reading, counting sheep?
Any article I see in a magazine
On the subject of sleep, I read
Trying to discover how much sleep
The average person might need.
(Don’t ask me who the average person is.
It never makes that clear.
But I keep reading and hoping
That I’ll get a rough idea.)
Well, guess what? On my ipad
Only the other day,
I found this enlightening article.
It enlightened ME anyway!
Entitled The Bizarre Sleeping Habits
Of – you’ll never guess –
Very famous people.
Forty – five of them – or was it less?
Don’t fret, I’m just going to mention
the odd one or two.
(Some of the names I’d never heard of.
I found myself asking ‘Who?’)
Will Shakespeare was a troubled sleeper,
Charles Dickens, an insomniac.
Voltaire had forty cups of coffee a day
Before he hit the sack.
Alexander Graham Bell
Slept for four to six hours a day
And then worked all night.
If it suited him, that’s okay.
Albert Einstein slept ten hours a night
And had naps in the daytime too.
The very same sleeping pattern as ME.
I couldn’t believe it was true.
I wish I had his brain as well
As his sleeping pattern, I really DO!
illustration by ume-nori
