Gabriel’s Horn

The trumpet notes drift to her in sleep, a melody she’s never heard, stupefying in its beauty, a solo played just for her. She pictures the lone trumpeter in the street leaning against a lamp post, an Edward Hopper figure half in shadow fingering the valves, blowing soaring notes. Is it a love song? A keening? Exultation to something higher? More mesmerizing and seductive than she imagines the song of the sirens, like Odysseus she wants to follow it, but is rendered motionless, tied to the mast of her bed.

When unwanted silence returns, she rouses herself and hurries to the window sure to catch the thin time trumpeter, but there are only parked cars in the street, a family of raccoons tripping her neighbor’s outdoor sensor, a streetlight at the corner lighting a stray cat on the prowl. She returns to bed to catch a few more restful hours before dawn.

The flap of wings is like the loud snap of a sheet on a crisp sunny morn, a whoosh of air, wings beating so close she ducks and cowers from what she cannot see, trying in vain to control the rapid flailing of her caged heart. Fearful of disturbing the source about her head, she lies down, submissive. It hovers and finally rests above her crown where it abolishes fear, holds her weary spirit, healing it for another go, imparting peace and impossible joy before it is gone quick as it came, before she has a chance to ask her questions, to say her thanks. A dream within a dream.

Only a glass of wine with dinner, she’s sure. Her head says dream. Her heart knows better. Who can she tell? What would she say in the telling? She did not awake from the nighttime visitations with any message to share, only indescribable majesty, succor in the nick of time, divinity delivered in a way she can digest, endlessly nourishing. A longing quenched, a new one in its place.