Island

There’s a dream I keep having where I’m running in slow motion ..and snakes are catching up with me ..I fall off a cliff and scream ..but no sound comes out ..I’m laying in a green field ..children stand around me and stare ..from a safe distance ..like I’m a wolf playing dead ..a little girl walks over and lays down a handful of freshly picked poppies .. I accept them and put my hands together in a gesture of gratitude ..a mynah bird lands on her shoulder ..saying “pay attention ..pay attention”..I ask who it’s speaking to ..me or her ..and she says: “Anybody who can hear ..they remind us to see what’s near.” I look around ..this is definitely paradise .. sparkling waves on the beach ..waterfalls coming out of the face of cliffs ..mists above the trees ..she asks me if I’m hungry ..I follow her into a cove ..along the edge of a lagoon ..jade green ..and into a village made of driftwood huts “pay attention ..pay attention” ..I see women pit-baking shell fish .. men spearfishing in pools “pay attention ..pay attention” A taller and darker version of the flower girl is standing at a door ..she is wearing a white Muslim shirt, diesel jeans and coral jewelry ..come in come in ..she says ..I gorge myself on baked salmon while the mother asks me if I’ve ever ridden a Harley Davidson ..she says she would like to get a Yamaha dirt bike ..and maybe a boat ..she shows me pictures in a Sears and Roebuck ‘spring and summer catalog’ from like 1962 ..wedgy shoes and wonder bras ..she says that the island just won a claim for royalties from oil drilling operations dating back to the sixties ..she wants to know where she can ‘trade’ them for these goods ..I tell her about a major university just up the coast with computers that anybody can use ..she should get an eBay account ..she tells me she wants an Apple computer with an IPod and .. “pay attention ..pay attention” I wake up in bed ..my alarm clock plays a tape of Jim Morrison saying “pay attention ..pay attention” ..from a poem that starts something like: “Is everybody in ..the ceremony is about to begin.”