Number seventeen dream scene

My God, I am back.
I am taken here, I am shown.
Familiar, this old warehouse,
that I knew, that I ran,
those thirteen years.
The night man is sick.
I do the shutdown, the lockup,
the securing of the place.
A half mile walk.
Brown bats the only company.
There’s a troubling thrum to the scene,
like the billowing of a black heart.
I step out into the blowing snow,
checking the perimeter.
I round the southern corner,
and recoil at the sight of a chasm by Dock One.
Longer than an eighteen wheeler, and bottomless
in the sulfur-lit snow showers.
I am drawn and repulsed, all at once.
In these depths lies my life’s greatest fear,
but I must come to know its face.
I see, sitting on the dock in the orange glow,
a boy with a fishing rod.
He moves not, and I see that he is bronze.
At a loss, I study his meaning.
Out of a powdery drift steps a Clown
and straddles his back.
He cracks a whip, and screams with glee.
I make the leap,
and now I know.