Dream Logic

In the gardens of my childhood, a subdivided acre behind the row of four rented cottages, I was digging in the soft deep dirt for lugworms, usually found in the intertidal sand of beaches. I excavated one and dropped it in a plastic bag with an inch of seawater in the bottom, but abandoned the search when I uncovered a hollow chamber the size and shape of a child's balloon -- I was afraid of being attacked by the bees which I knew had made it. With the kind of narrative skip common in dreams, I noticed that the sports field next to the gardens had been dug up to reveal the salt dome beneath. Workmen were carving the white salt into a replica of the hills that rose above our little valley. So far, they'd only roughed out the contours, and created a miniature of the parish church. The tall wire mesh boundary fence was gone and big hawthorn bushes had been planted in its place, each bent like an elbow, to create the beginnings of a hedge. I walked along it, towards my childhood home. And then I woke up.