"The Wharf"

 

The Wharf-Yesterday, he was nowhere to be found...sailing the skies outwards and under...he made a leap, from earth to ocean, gloomy eyes exploring walls and he looks about at his world. There is none to be seen when he steped onto the surface of the dock. No pretty maiden to greet him. No. Nothing outstanding, no solemn icons to greet him.No little boys were playing stick ball or dueling. No smell of baked cod or harliquine dolls present from stalls that lined the wharf. He is puzzled, feverish.

 

He longs for gin and a bath. The attentions of a harlot to ease his seafoam aches-yet can find no one.The winds grazes past him and he hears a distant toll-it comes from the church where he found solace before taking to the sea on his fishing voyages. Implulsivly, he ventures towardit.The old cobblestones of the street where long and spacious,more barren then usual and he wondered, "where could they all be?" There was nothing with which he was familiar. No mares on the streets,no old matrons hem and maw carrying trouts in their billowing wool aprons to the huts for evening suppers. There was that distant sound. It was like the tolling of the cathedral bells and he made his way down he bleaken streets where there was nothing to guide him save the soft luminescent glow of the sooty lanterns along the way. He angles this way and that, his boots still caked in mud and crushed shell. Incredulous to any of this, he makes his way up the hillside where the cathedral lay, disregarding his knapsack and laying his precious ores to the ground...up he goes, his head still in a stew of confusion. The bell above him. There is nothing to be seen. The cathedral is open, and he makes his way in, opening wide the solume door and was greeted not by the delicate lights of the beeswax candles nor the knowing glow of holy figures...he saw instead, once more, the open sea, rendered in illuminated glass...he was confused, dispirited and pulled out a hand wrought cigarette, and lit. The room was a spinning realm fashioned in cobalt. the light was cold and capricious, though he felt worn, for he had not slept in hours.He layed on blue tinged marble floors . He looked up toward the cornices recessed in the center of the hall and saw, not the holy face of God, but an hourglass, painted the color of wine. "How odd", he thought, "that I should see all this". there was still nobody to be seen, though the stained glass imagery delicately moved from pane to pane, medieval fish swimming from one turn to the next. He gave a nod, and moved out to the world, confused, yet slightly satisfied. he sought out his hut, the lone hut where he washed away his sorrows in a heady brew of rum and pipe smoke. The cigarette burned his hand and tossed it to ground. The rains were coming-he smelled them, though he should have been confused by his predicament, he felt a sort of odd comfort.

 

He saw his home in the distance, a ramshackle hut. "Perhaps this will make sense" he wondered, and opened the door. There was nothing to be seen. Nothing but the ghosts of his own volition. Discarded nets, a whaler's hook caked in rust, a fallen picture of his love shrouded in dust.Yet nothing familiar. The place seemed more dank then usual. No smell of sweet potatoes, no smell of sage in the room-yet- The air grew thick with sweetness, a sweetness that seemed out of place, but appropriate. He looked down to his boot soles and saw that the floor was now flowing with salt water. the ocean seemed to be trickling in, as though coming to reclaim him. It was everywhere, unbroken and dense, and swallowed all about him. The water filled the room and unhinged the door. He climbed about it, that which was once a bed that was draped in Egyptian linen from some long forgotten voyage. He drifted upon the board, sailing back from where he came, the blurring of space all about him."Why is this happening?" He asked, "What is this world I am seeing?". He drifted, the hut was just a memory , the ocean engulfed the small village where none had come to greet him. Was he alive? Was he present at all? Present in his body, his soul, his realm? What realm? What ease? What place?

 

He careened-moved caselessly, toward an ocean, the villiage swolled into nothing, asthough the dock had never existed at all. He lifted his weary head. An image appeared before him, prosaic and unbroken. There was a wild white light that appreared-endless and all knowing. He moved toward it, as the sun set in the west. You are gone, my friend, a voice uttered, you are gone. The illumination engulfed him without silence-and he returned back from which he had come-to the infinate-ascending, forever-into light.