I had a dream last night, but I forget what it was
I had a dream last night about you, my friend
I had a dream: I wanted to sleep next to plastic
I had a dream: I wanted to lick your knees
I had a dream: It was about nothing
Camper Van Beethoven — “Take the Skinheads Bowling”
I drop into the water, and a shiver electrifies my spine, exploding out my fingertips. “Gah!” I shake my head. No waders. Bare chest.
I lift my arms high above the quiet stream. The water is clear and magnifies bald branches, submerged beneath the surface; emerald plant stalks; and stones, some round, some jagged. I cast.
I toss a brown caddis upstream from where I see her, roosting on a nest of granite pebbles. She is fat, like a grouper, spotted and red. She doesn’t belong here. She is beautiful, enchanted.
The sun warms my head, and I look up, squinting. I smell water. I hear the breeze hush through the tall grass.
You are there, my old friend–a thin white man, your hands dancing through a wicker creel–my alter ego, my son grown to adulthood? I don’t see your face, but I know you.
On a stream of natural magic, the fly floats, silently, on the path I’d imagined.
She strikes, and I’m stripping line. The universe converges in the moment. We foxtrot: Slow-slow-quick-quick.
I pull her in.
I land her.
She flaps in the grass.
You hold the net. Too late. You laugh in the wind.
I am reaching for the shore, to pull myself up by a branch, and a hook snags my right eye. Yours or mine?
She slaps the ground. I hear a splash, and in my temporary blindness, I don’t know if she’s been released. Silently, I wish for her to swim back to her nest of stones, and lament that I may have missed my chance to say goodbye.
The hook would be easy to remove, were it not for the barb, which snags my eyelid, as I try to work it out.
You bend over to help. I feel your cold hands on my face. Gently, you pull my skin, and I open my eye. There is a small hole, but I doubt there will be much scar.
There’s not a line that goes here that rhymes with anything.
I had a dream last night. The picture is clear, the vision unfathomable. Where do I cast?