Honeysuckle

Last night before I went to sleep, I thought about writing.
Not about writing, as such, but more, the act of capturing something. Some elusive, nameless feeling, some almost audible whisper; some slight, fleeting colour in the corner of the eye. It almost impossible to put this process into words. But a writer must always try...

Consider, if you will, a night fisherman, casting his net into the ink-black waters for something, he knows not what. And all the while the boat is gently rocked by the oncoming tide. The waves of sleep. And before he knows it, his lantern blows out, and he is pulled adrift...

In the dream I was in a garden, adrift with snow. And  I was thinking about the honeysuckle. How to put it into words. I was staring at it, thinking, how can I describe this honeysuckle, the way it looks with the snow falling all around it. And then I realised suddenly that it couldn't be snowing, if the honeysuckle was in bloom. And then the dream shifted, and changed, as someone might turn their face away in a crowd to keep from being recognised. I found myself in bed. Still in a garden, but there was no more honeysuckle, no more snow. And you were in the bed beside me. Was this the shared dream we were seeking? "Look," you said, "look at the birds", and above us was an enormous tree, filled with birds of all varieties. The birds were building nests and flying from branch to branch. There were a great number of pigeons, I recall. And we lay there for quite some time, just looking at the birds together. And then you got up. "Why are you leaving," I asked. "We didn't need to get out of bed, not just yet." But you didn't reply, and then you were gone. And then I realised that the birds weren't just making nests, they were building something altogether more complex, a system of ropes and pulleys and strange structures. And that blossoming on the trees were huge honeysuckle flowers, and this realisation unsettled me more than the birds or anything else. It started snowing again. I realised that I was dreaming, and I woke up.

What did the night-fisherman catch, with his dream-net?
A flock of strange birds in a strange tree.
Honeysuckle flowers.
Soft flakes of snow.

Your absence.
Your absence, the feeling I couldn't put a name to. Because how can you name nothing? How can you name emptiness and loss?

A writer must always try.