When I’m ready, I open the back door and step out onto my deck. In the dream, the deck is more like a dock, and I go to the edge, where the river is rushing by. I sit down in a swivel chair I have out there, affix one of my lures to my fishing-line and drop it in the moving water. I fish for quite a while, usually, before I get a tug on the line. I spend the time between nibbles gazing into the sky or around the yard.
A jet moves slowly across the blue expanse, rushing toward some distant place. In the yard, bushes need attending to. A drought has turned some of the plants brown. I really should be…
My fishing rod twitches a little, then bends toward the surface of the rushing water. A bite! Often, my dream only allows me a small, undersized fish, which I have to throw back. Occasionally, I get legitimate ones, though. They fight like crazy sometimes, but they’re no match for me, a veteran angler. By the end of the dream, I often have three or four big ones in my creel by sundown.
I head back inside and clean my catch, put them in the refrigerator.
I have some dinner, then, and go to sleep.
And that’s when I wake up.
