Settlement

Oceans

In the dream I am in a cathedral or a chapel. The pews are full of people I know. They are dressed Sunday best and sit facing forward, waiting for the preacher, the man of experience. 

It is very quiet in the church but for a kind of resonance in the room, a fading hum. Perhaps the afterglow of the organ. No one speaks. Women fan themselves, shift on the lacquered wood. 

At some point I begin to ask for my dead friend. I say his name and I ask where he is. At first I speak the question, then I shout it. As in all dreams, I am both inside myself and outside, watching my face as I call for my friend dead decades ago.

My companions beside me are silent, muteshouldered. They can hear me but they do not turn. It is not theirs to turn. It is mine to call the name of my friend and theirs to wait for him to appear. 

For I know he will appear. If I call loud enough and long enough he will appear and he will join us. This is the morning and these the clothes. The faces of those I have known who do not turn, who will never turn, because my voice is mine and the magic mine alone to do. 

I wake up and go to the beach. There is a storm over the ocean and the wind has been blowing for three days. The waves are white and the sea is gray.  On the sand a man is fixing the hull of his catamaran. I help him drive home a rivet. He gestures to the mast, to the wind howling in the rigging. A hand of starlings flies backward.

I sit on a driftwood log. Down the beach a bodybuilder is walking slowly toward me. He is enormous and hairless and in one hand carries a mask and snorkel. He walks with his head down, watching his feet, kicking the sand. When he is in front of me he puts on the mask and snorkel and then he walks into the sea.