Night draws in and it's busy out there. Lying on the bed, you hear the grasshoppers stridulate and the bats squeak. There’s subdued chatter from the garden. A thin trail of woodsmoke and the tangy odour that follows it. In the heavens, the stars make slow rotations. Glistening against the gradient of sapphire into onyx, each acts as anchor to a gossamer string that makes long trails down through the sky, through your open window, where it wraps itself around your dreams. Each tug asks a different question and restructures the landscape of the dream. Each is a hook into some new idea down an untrodden path excited to be tread upon. And when you wake to see the gilded light of dawn, the mechanisms of the dream will be hidden by memory and sunlight. But the stars watch on, even when they are unseen.
Paddy Dobson
20th July 2021