Rip Van Winkle

He fell asleep sitting on a school chair in the hot shed, pin holes of light shining through the corrugated iron and spearing his body, his head dropping so that his whitened chin bristles touched his chest.
He dreamed he gave six men his clothes in the desert and the sun shone right through his body and the heat drove him to the sea. He was young then and lying on the beach with the sun beating down on his shoulders. Beautiful girls, screams of babies, chatter, salt water and seagulls. His body was supple, lithe and the warmth of the girl beside him thrilled him. Her hip touched his as she rolled over on the towel. His life, as seen between the crook of his arm and striped towel, was like the flowering red, yellow and green of a psychedelic movie and full of sex, that is all he was.
He woke with a start in the workshop, saw the tools lying against the forge, his boots; the leather worn off the toes and steel shining through. He woke in the middle of a stinking hot day, in a shed in Fremantle, an old man.