New Historical novel set in 1775

PRUDENCE

There seems to be no rhyme or reason to the forces which, collectively or individually, draw a person to a place.  Not at first. Time and logic conjoined through clarity have precocious beginnings. Sometimes it is a dream, or a series of them. Sometimes it is that wondrous fraction of thought that nearly wakes you, tugs at you, prods you like a past and ever-present lover that has always remained with you in your precious and solitary sleep. Maybe it’s the warmth. Or the touch that needs no mention. Or the clarity of consciousness that comes immediately out of that moment before you wake and consider if the muse and magic you have been handed is worth writing down or recounting in confused mumbling monotone to your bedmate – whom- no matter how dear, can rarely be entrusted with so deep an inner poem.

No. Dreams are your own responsibility.

Perhaps, only when a need or an ill -defined want has been buried so long ago, the only hope you have of recovering and naming that imp is to trust in the fates. I have this place I go to, but rarely by forcing my will to bring me there. It is a familiar place. A place I have never spoken of. A place I have never renamed. As a small child of …well, honestly? for as long as I can remember remembering; for as long as I have been a child – (which is forever)- I named this place Dream Towne. We all have one. You know the place, don’t you? The place where everyone you ever knew, will know or hope to know, exist in lucid color and speak in wise phrases using abstruse language known only to you since the very moment of inception. The Forever Place. The place where the forgotten are intimate, the unattainable or majestic are made as small and tacit as a handshake, where the dead are familiar, warm and quick-slow; where your long buried pets sit up to lick your face and your joy is unencumbered by the facts of waking life. There are no nightmares here. Nightmares are baseless concepts, originating from a horror – specifically -the fear of loss. The Forever Place –Dream Towne is past loss or fear. It is the astral heart. The place that makes your body sigh, or cry, or call out the names of your beloved within a deep corporeal sleep. Dream Towne makes you speak in tongues, just like your very favorite prophet. Dream Towne makes you a child, but wiser than any adult you have ever been or will ever know – in a language only known to you and they who speak with you. It is a language only made real by an individual’s need to translate. To carry quietly. To equalize. To unrealized fear. This is the place we will all go when, finally, our bodies die, and we no longer need air, or breath to breathe. This is the great astral collective. There is no fear in Dream Towne because it is on the Island. The only way off the Island is to be reminded that it’s your turn and your choice to ride the ferryboat to rebirth. In the Island sand footprints never disappear in the tide. The gulls sing.  There resides only the calmness and the surety that nothing, nothing,

nothing

can destroy the immutable and personal soul.

Dream Towne is where I hope to meet my maker and not tremble in fear and awe. Dream Towne is where my maker will prepare me an astral peanut butter sandwich and point to the horizon. Peace and morning sailboats. My maker is an old woman who bakes blueberry pies by lunchtime. My maker trusts me to take no more than my share of that beautiful warm pie, and that I know just which piece of pie is mine.

It is through the great instigator – remembrance; and the great equalizer, death, that I was brought back to Prudence Island.

~ Levi C. Cant-  Upon the 3 p.m. Ferry Crossing From Bristol to Prudence- Monday Nov. 6, 2013