Saltwater Dreams

Copyright © 2009 Ernest Bloom.

Distant red buoys ring-a-ding in the murky darkening,
and her eyelids fall heavily, ponderously, her breath
deepening in the cool sheets. Sleep, darling girl, for you
know not what possibilities tomorrows unnumbered
may unfold before you. The salt breath chuffing through
thin window curtains draws you out in your dreams like a
miscast Wendy who doesn't realize yet she's waiting
for a boy who lives forever to fly her through dejected,
lonely nights on magic pirate adventures full of friendly,
ticking clocks and the snapping jaws of crocodile justice.

When they take you out to play in Great Kills,
you sometimes sneak away to the marina's edge
just to breathe the salty world entire in gulping lungfuls
and envisage something childishly akin to shipping out
with Ishmael and Queequeg and Starbuck and Stubbs,
leaving mad Ahab to his own iconoclastic devices.
Maybe tomorrow Grandfather will hold your little hand
in his big brown one and take you down to watch
the bridge open up and the lights of the huge, silent ships
coming home into the harbor. Remember those lights with
all your heart, little girl; fix them in your mind, for many
years from now when you see their reflection written
in the night skies above, so many miles removed from
any shoreline, you may dream again of a Peter Pan who,
I swear, is still waiting out here, searching everywhere for a
perfect girl just like you.