Dreams from the Center of the Universe:

Recurring, as suns set, and stars wake

The dream in question appears differently each night

In the same way, Like the sea how it moves differently

In warmth and cold

When the moon is full or new, The dream came back,

A conversation I remembered, In echoes from lives before

The dream which I’ve had so many times

That I'll never gain lucidity

It feels too real

"Where is the center of the universe?"

Everyone at the party wants to ask me

In desperation, they ask and beg for an answer

Every Night, always the same reply

Bali

The outcast island

Where calm water

Shreds coconut husks

With incessant salt

Where too far from shore

Currents rip

And pull unweary men

To bleak, blue horizons

Where monster ships rest off the shore

Weathered Bones, forgotten stories, and living fish

The volcano shifts them in the sand

Like a master playing chess

The sand which maps the water

The water which is shepherded by air

The world a map of energy

And it all leads to Bali

So different so magic so forgiving to tender so ruthless

The water is calm in the

Shadow of the volcano

Once the dream shifted

You can move far away from Florida,

But it will still be the foreground in your dreams.

I emerged into a classic Floridian scene

I remembered the pool, the same teal body that I froze in

When I was a little girl

I don't mean I froze, like shivering under sunshine

Or even on balmy Florida nights, where tiki torches

Burned bright yellow with butane and smoked

The stars right from the sky, they left their orbits to dance with me in the pool

When I was a little girl, I froze in fear, my body floating, but not stirring

I made not a ripple, with

Breath caught in my chest, letting me bob like a duckling

I was sure the drowned wasp who brushed against my foot

Was in fact, a great white, lost from the ocean

And going hungry in my childhood pool

My imagination haunted me in my youth

But in the dreamscape, I was still a little girl

This time, kneeling on the edge of the pool

And there was a focus, which blurred the edges of my vision

A whirlpool before my eyes that sucked me into the moment

There was a fade which made me believe everything was real

In my childhood home

Yard

I fell to my knees

The teal Florida pool

That body of water which I was sure

When I was just a girl

Harbored great whites waiting for me

As soon as my feet floated from the shallow end

Deviant outcast first in youth by the pool

The loneliness of my childhood, the isolation

Pink flamingoes watched

The sky on fire

Could they even tell at all?

Coming in waves

And mermaid painted on the fence

Suddenly, the mountain blew apart

Lava flowed

I woke in Bali, sleeping at the foot of the volcano

Balis inception

Creation and destruction of Agung

And bali

And the last from the sea

In the shadow of a volcano

Mount Agung is her name

She rises On the East coast

Drawn there as if by bezel and degree

This was my new home

Which reached above the clouds

A babe in the arms of the sleeping earth

Felt the plates shifting

Felt the shifting of the island

Deviant outcast first in youth by the pool

The loneliess of my childhood the isolation

Great whites didnt scare me anymore

Not the mermaid on the fence

I was a mermaid in the water

Swimming everyday

Submerging and listening to the subconcious rumblings in the flores sea

For that evening

As I had just finished recounting the story

Of the vivid explosion to my friend

The rumbling Earth

As I scooted below the treeline

Just where my watchful eyes

Could no longer pierce the aura of agung

They called out to me

“Look! Agung is blowing!”

“Julie your dream came true!”

As oblivious and naive as in my youth

Now, hiding in the base of the wave

The echoey chamber

I slide past the explosion, the culmination

Oblivious in my waking state

Breathing air

On land

The whispers of the sea, subliminal messaging,

Lost in the terrestrial atmosphere

Awake in a breathing, walking state

Even with a warning from my dreams

That night,

I slept under the stars once more

And I kissed the sweet tropical air

When I gasped my breath

From my vivid dreams

The waves beckoned me, like

Sirens calling to sailors to deep sea

It tucked me in for more sweet dreams