My take on "Sonny's Dream" is that the "voice" in the song, the narrator of the story, is the mother . . . but you don't figure it out until the last lines of the third verse "I know I can't hold him though I've tried and I've tried". Up until the end you think the narrator is the simply the omniscient authorial voice telling a tale of a stifled son, then you're kicked in the guts by the poignant realisation that the story is being told by the about-to-be abandoned mother. Sonny didn't stay, he left for McMurray or wherever and he never came back, just like his mother always knew he would. But the fourth Imlach/Moore verse subverts the original surprise ending and unequivocally makes the story one about a middle-aged bachelor haunted by matriarchal authority.