The Schooner Flight

Dreams play an important role in “The Schooner Flight,” and the continued appearance of Maria Concepcion’s mysterious Book of Dreams make it an important structural motif. In the poem’s very first lines, as Shabine leaves his family in the night, he takes one last look at “the dreamless face of Maria Concepcion” (Line 4). While this first description of Maria can be construed as simply a description of her peaceful sleep, it also alludes to the dream burning in Shabine that prompts him to leave—and the lack of that dream in his wife. Most importantly, however, it sets up the relevance of dreams to the poem and their connection to Maria.

Curiously, the “insomniac’s Bible” (Line 337), the “soiled orange booklet with a cyclop’s eye / center” (Line 338-339) that “anchored [Maria’s] sleep” (Line 337) is never able to actually interpret any dream in the poem. Instead, the book “ha[s] no answer” (Line 354) to each dream with which it is confronted, despite how Maria “ravage[s] the book / for the dream meaning […] there was nothing” (Lines 354-355). Despite the book’s failure, the dreams hold meanings that the book cannot parse. Maria’s dream of “whales and a storm” (Line 346) recalls the Biblical story of Jonah and the whale, and Shabine’s dream of “three old women / as featureless as silkworms, stitching [his] fate” (Lines 348-349) recalls the Greco-Roman mythology of the three Fates.

The book finds its real meaning in what characters ascribe to it. Shabine weeps for the book, and in his near-death experience in the storm, he identifies himself as “the drowned sailor in [Maria’s] Book of Dreams” (Line 398). The Book is a presence in the poem that promises answers to mysteries but that either cannot or will not provide them. Instead, it becomes a tool to determine individual identity. When Shabine finds his peace at the poem’s end, he declares, “I finish dream” (Line 438). Here, it is as if Shabine wakes from the mysteries that would require the Book of Dreams’ guidance, requiring answers no longer.