Dry Dreaming

 

The town looked, that morning, as if some diligent night-worker had painted the whole place, roofs and all, in gold. But, of course, the hours of darkness had not been sufficient for such a feat. Therefore, it must be the unusual refraction of sunbeams by quirk of cloud – and glinting echo of aircraft and of towering cranes marching through the close-ordered streets towards the dry dock. The massive sea-liner was already covered in worker ants in cloth claps. The sun went under a cloud – and the legendary decorator of the small hours became just as unbelievable as God. Bobby and Beryl skipped hand in hand above the cobbles, heading for the aerodrome: they liked to watch the landings and the people in scarves alighting down the ramps. Bobby whistled through his teeth in the same breath as a large shape skimmed by the skin of its own teeth perilously close to the grey-slated roofs. He wondered if he might dream later of the resounding crash in a quarter of the town which Bobby and Beryl could never seem to reach. The sun reappeared, but the earlier magic had vanished. This time, the sun’s mouth was glum-turned and its eyes sizzling tears – not unlike the man in the moon once was, when the aircraft were grounded long in the sad past, before the present knew the etiquette of meeting the future. Bobby left Beryl with a gentle kiss upon her lips, retaining a waft of her breath in both his own nostrils for later savouring. One of today’s passengers was to be – who knows? The ship’s captain? A new handler of the stars? Beryl’s former sweetheart called Bobby? Meanwhile, a vast human-like body lay strewn across the southern roof-reaches – yellow offal steaming off it under the now faceless sun. I noticed a new vista of ball in balljoint, like egg in eggcup, with painterly colours as backdrop. You can notice me in the corner above. Gives some observational credence to Bobby’s cranking of invisible ratchets in the captain’s wheel-room above decks to move his ship from dry dock, each of the ship’s funnels pouring smoke with engine-room flunkeys sweating below decks as the cogs failed to bite in unison with other cogs but bit bloodily instead upon these flunkeys themselves who would never glimpse the wondrous balljoint vision displayed above decks. But there could be no right point of view. Even my own angle of vision was halted at half mast by the end of it all, as if I had involuntarily undocked from a soon to be forgotten dream.