“That if you could just rearrange things the right way | you’d find your true life, | the right path, the answer to your questions.” ~ Peter Pereira, from “Anagrammer”

“Platypus Bay, Fraser Island” (1947)
by Sidney Nolan

                   

Loft Bedroom, Tranquility Cottage, Orcas Island

We face the open window, let the salt
air from Harney Channel blow
across our naked bodies.
On the shoreline, black water sieves
through beach gravel and bleached driftwood
as we drift in and out of sleep,
life in the city far behind us,
our ears tuned to bat-wing and flittermouse,
an ancient madrona gently creaking
in the late summer night.Suddenly, the lights of a passing car ferry
flood our room—amid the splendor of sodium beacons,
fluorescent tubes, spotlights and hall lamps,
the decks are empty, all the passenger seats
abandoned. I try to wake you—but the ghost ship
disappears beyond a stand of cedars, its idling turbines
fading quickly into the darkness

Then the world is deadly calm.
I feel your [breathing] rise and fall, wonder
if I had imagined it—the sudden light,
the vacant ferry awesome as a Rilke angel.
I am ready to let the image go, when
slowly, with a gentle rocking cadence,
the wake begins to wash against the shore.

~ Peter Pereira

                   

Music by The Boxer Rebellion, “Dream”