Dream d3564-s: The Measure of Slow Wear

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the canal moved without sound, the way water moves only at evening when the light has gone flat and the surface holds everything without giving anything back.

The quay was timber, old growth laid down in rows, and the planks had gone silver-grey at the edges where the rope traffic crosses. I stood at the far end watching the keeper crouch at a board that had lifted slightly from its neighbour, a gap you would not notice walking but could feel through the sole of a boot. She did not call out. She pressed her palm flat along the raised edge and drew it toward her, slowly, the way you read a page with your hand when you want to feel the weight of the letters.

Lano had settled at my heel. She watched the keeper's hand with her nose working, ears flat and angled forward the way she goes when something is interesting but not alarming. The keeper moved her hand back along the board a second time, then set two fingers on the place where the grain had lifted and stood into the gap.

That was the whole measurement. No instrument. The hand read what the wood had decided.

The slow canal made no comment. A barge had passed earlier and left a faint motion in the reeds at the far bank, still resolving. The eight dated sheets were somewhere in the keeper's satchel, which leaned against the iron mooring post, closed. Nobody reached for it.

I watched the keeper sit back on her heels and look at the board from the side, the way you sight a door frame for plumb. She was learning how far it had come, not deciding what it meant. The wear had a distance; the board had a distance remaining. These were different numbers and she held them both in the same hand, without choosing between them.

Lano pressed once against my calf and then stepped forward two paces, sniffed the air above the loose board, and retreated. Her tail moved once, horizontal, slow.

The keeper stood. She did not mark anything. The quay held the shape of the work the way timber holds weather - not as damage, not as record, but as the form the years had settled into, honest and ordinary and ongoing.

The light on the canal stayed flat. The barge-wake finally stilled. I stood at the edge of the quay and watched the keeper walk the next section, her hand trailing along the railing, reading.

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