Category Archives: Thomas Davis

May 15, 2012 · 6:27 am

Uncover My Eyes

by Thomas Davis

Uncover my eyes that I may look
And see the mountains covered with shadow,
The tambourine of stars in the sky,
The trumpet of the new moon!

Uncover my eyes that I may look
And see the rain cloud tent over the earth,
The rain slant like small grey spears into the earth,
The small rivers flowing away from flinty rock!

Uncover my eyes that I may look
And see her dancing to the melodious sound of the harp,
Her feet moving like the wind-blown blossoms of cherry trees,
Her hands clapping in time to the movement of stars!

Note: This is a love poem I wrote to Ethel when we were both young. These and the children’s poems I am posting were written in the 1960s and 1970s. Reading these, I find I have lost the young poet’s lyricism. But I still love Ethel. A lifetime love is still possible.

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May 11, 2012 · 6:07 am

16. Separation in the Wilderness

an epic poem by Thomas Davis

His stupefaction, as he sat in snow
Beside the boulder as his pain seared skin,
Kept him from seeing Cragdon packing up
To struggle back the way they’d come across
The treachery of fields of blinding snow.

“I’m leaving now,” the young man said, his face
A mask of pain where dragon’s fire had burned
His arm and side. “I’m done. I’m going home.”

Ruarther, from his seat, looked up and stared
Into the young man’s bleary-looking eyes.

“You’ve lost your mind,” he said. “We’re injured bad.
Until we’ve got our hurts controlled, the village
Is just a dream you’ll never reach alive.”

The pre-dawn cold was hinting at the light
Now filtering along the eastern ridges.

“I knew I’d have to go alone,” the young man said.
“You’re crazy. Why I followed you out here
Is something that I’ll never understand.”

“The witch’s child has stirred the dragons up,”
Ruarther growled. “You’re suffering from burns
Inflicted by a dragon hurtling
From skies without a reason made by us.”

“Perhaps it read our minds and gave us warning
That murdering a child is not the way
To keep the human, dragon peace,” he said.
“I’ll send the hunters out with fresh supplies.
You’ll have to keep alive until you’re found.”

Ruarther looked inside the raging self
That seemed to boil with pain and anger branded
So deep it was the substance of his life.
He growled again, but did not say a word.

As Cragdon looked at him, the man he’d seen
As better than a man could ever be,
His hero since he’d been a child who’d hung
Upon the village’s stone wall to watch
For hunters coming from the woods, their game
On tripods made of fresh-cut branches roped
Around their hips, or slung on massive shoulders,
And wondered why he’d failed to see the truth.
The grim, dark man who leaned against the boulder
Was not a village man, but bound
To raving spirit beasts whose sentience
Danced chaos born from rage into the world.
He shook his head and looked toward the slopes
That angled down toward the only place
He really cared about inside the world.

“I’m going now,” he said. The snow shined brightly
As sunrise danced with sky fire as it crept
Across the treacherous, white miles of crust.
He wondered if he had the strength to make
It to his wife and child, the life he loved.
He briefly wondered where the dragon was.
It too was facing weeks of burning pain.
He shook his head, then moved out from the ridge.

Ruarther failed to hear, or see, when Cragdon
Began his journey home. He fought to block
His pain from consciousness and tried to focus
Upon the task of finding peace again
By murdering the witch’s child and letting dragons
Go back to living in their caves away
From hunters and their villages and homes.
He tried to see the child’s unnatural eyes
And wondered how a witch with minor skills
Could birth a witch so powerful her strings
Turned dragons into puppets of her will.

He felt the golden dragon’s whirling eyes
Confront him, heard the power in her voice,
But when he looked around to see her body,
The wilderness and sky were empty, vast
Beyond imagination, fevers wrapped
Around him like a fire inside his flesh.
He cupped snow in his hands and spread its cold
Upon his burns and coughed deep in his lungs.
He wondered if he’d be alive when dawn
Lit up the sky again and wheeled another day.

But then he knew: He’d kill the witch’s child.
He’d give Ruanne the peace his love deserved.
He’d let the dragons settle back into their lives.

He forced himself onto his feet and put
More wood to burn upon the dying fire.

Click to hear an audio of this section: Separation in the Wilderness

Note: This is the sixteenth installment of a long narrative poem. Inspired by John Keats’ long narrative poem, Lamia, it tells a story set in ancient times when dragons and humans were at peace. Click on the numbers below to reach other sections, or go to the Categories box to the right under The Dragon Epic. Click on 1 to go to the beginning and read forward. Go to 15 to read the installment before this one. Click on 17 to go to the next installment.

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May 7, 2012 · 6:52 am

The Old Gray Wife

by Thomas Davis

I’ve never met a woman
Who looked so tired and worn
As that old earthy lady
Of the early morn.

She wears gray skirts and blouses
Soaked wet by morning dew
And goes around a dyeing
The skies a laundry blue.

I’ve heard that her bright husband
Is such a sleepyhead
She has to light his fire
To get him out of bed.

Note: Since posting the last of the sonnet sequence, I have been wondering what to post next. Writing the dragon epic is taking up the little writing time I have, but I am only able to write one section a week. The problem is that Ethel and I each post two poems a week. Betty Hayes Albright, who posts wonderful children’s poetry, recently asked if I would post children’s poetry I wrote for my two daughters, Sonja Bingen and Mary Wood, when they were young. I am not sure they will remember the poems, but that is one answer to my dilemma. Another is that I could publish love poems I wrote to Ethel when we were young. I have decided to publish both children’s and love poems over the next few months as I finish the dragon epic. Most were written in the 1960s and 1970s, although I am still writing love poems to Ethel all these years later.

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May 3, 2012 · 6:08 am

15. Ending Dragon Community

an epic poem by Thomas Davis

Inside the conclave’s cavern elders sat
Upon the great, stone ledge, their eyes so bright
The darkness near them whorled with colored lights.
Ssruanne, her spirit broken by the chaos
Of dragons violating rules set down
To let community replace the greed
And singularity of dragonkind,
Joined song with Mmirimann as elders strove
To calm the storm as dragons fled from caves
Into the bitter cold of winter skies.

Wwilliama, feeling that her words had caused
The chaos when she’d let her fear of humans
Subdue her sentience, worked hard to meld
Her spirit’s song to all the others’ songs,
The elder’s unity the sanity
That could undo the madness firing hearts
With ancient hate and rage, the skies alive
With vengeance borne on frantic dragon wings.

At last they found Sshruunak’s black rage, the fear
Inside his hearts so dark it made him blind
To everything he’d learned of dragon lore.
They felt him hurtling toward two humans
Beside a fire that burned against the cold.
Ssruanne sent songs of peace and calm through skies
To where his fierce-some rage was uncontrolled.
The elder song inside the cavern rose
Into a symphony of power filled
With whirling eyes and hearts that tried to mend
The great black dragon’s rage and mindless fear.
The cavern echoed with the voices drawn
From dragon chests and massive vocal chords.

They felt the violation of the truce
Made with the human Clayton, King of Tryon.
They felt an arrow burn into Shruunak’s dark eye
And felt the burning agony of human skin
Seared by the fire of dragon breath and rage.
Their song intensified, past who they were.
Sshruunak turned, hurtled at the humans’ stone shield
Until the hunter jumped from hiding:
Another arrow, burning agony.
Flames wrapped the hunter in its searing shroud,
His pain, Sshruunak’s pain echoing a war
Into the cavern counterpoint to what
The elders had been sending out through skies.

The elders’ wings flared out and made a wind
Inside the cavern sweeping out through tunnels
Into the caves where dragons, not yet stained
By fear, confusion, rage, were pacing, troubled
By what had changed their lives so suddenly.
The males, spread out along the mountains’ slopes,
Sensed pain enveloping Sshruunak, felt wind
Inside the tunnels and the safe, dark caves.
Sshruunak fled humans and their deadly arrows;
The concave elders strove to turn to order,
To end the stirring of a world enraged.

“The peace is done,” said Mmirrimann. “The dragons
And humans know the taste of blood again.”

His words destroyed the elders’ song and plunged
The cavern deep in dark intense enough
To spread across the winter of the earth.

Ssruanne slumped on the eldest dais.
Inside the darkness of her spirit, small,
She felt the witch’s child and saw her hands
Create a golden dragon’s scale and burn
It into flesh, transforming human flesh.

Before the peace all dragonkind had faced
Eventual decline into extinction.
The young males thought that dragonkind could win
Against the tides of human machinations.
They knew their strength and did not understand
That war was more than strength or dragon will.
Shruunak had breached the truce, and now? She shuddered.

“What now?” she asked as Mmirimann stared blankly
At cavern darkness. “Wisdom still exists.”

“The witch’s child is dead,” the dragon mourned.
“I felt your vision, saw the withering
If rage was loosed into the world again.
Shruunak’s a hero now inside the caves.
He’ll want revenge against the girl, her death.”

Wwilliama said, “This will not be. I caused
This madness with a mindless stream of words.
The males will listen. If I see my madness,
They’ve got capacity to see their madness too.”

The geas came on Ssruanne and made her cry,
“The girl is still alive! She’ll stay alive!
I’ll use my dragon life to find the peace!”

Old Mmirrimann looked at his ancient lover,
Then slowly dragged himself into the dark.

Click to hear an audio of this section: Ending Dragon Community2

Note: This is the fifteenth installment of a long poem. Inspired by John Keats’ long narrative poem, Lamia, it tells a story set in ancient times when dragons and humans were at peace. Click on the numbers below to reach other sections, or go to the Categories box to the right under The Dragon Epic. Click on 1 to go to the beginning and read forward. Go to 14 to read the section before this one. Go to 16 to read the next section.

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April 29, 2012 · 8:07 am

Sonnet 45

by Thomas Davis

I name them: Sophie, Phoebe, William, Joe,
each one of them as individual
as early mornings in New Mexico
when shining light holds trees and land in thrall.
Joe, lost in circles only he can see,
and William, king of Legos, friend of friends,
Sweet Phoebe, bright as any sun, a sea
of light that’s always looking past the bend,
and Sophie, fledgling eagle nearing flight—
like William, first born, disciplined, and kind.

We’ve lost our son, and in our grief the blight
of memories assaults our days and minds,

but in our hearts grandchildren laugh and sing
and help us think we’ll know another Spring.

This is the last sonnet in the sonnet sequence I have been posting for the last several months. Kevin’s life (February 16, 1982 – July 23, 2010) was shortened by an unknown cancer that we only knew about for a few short weeks in June and July of 2010. Ethel and I traveled to Poughkeesie, New York to be with him during his last several weeks and was there during days of excruciating pain and small triumphs that ended in deep grief. The sonnets were mostly written as our beloved son lay dying as day passed day, and time’s march brought us, finally, to his death. They were written as my way of trying to deal with an impossible, unbelievable, unacceptable time. The last sonnets in the sequence were written after Ethel and I had returned to New Mexico.

Ethel has written extensively about this time too. The last poem she posted on fourwindowspress, “In the Night,” was written in a cancer ward hospital room. Some of her poetry foresaw the nightmare to come; other poems were written during Kevin’s illness. A few were written in the year and a half since we came home.

I hesitated to put these sonnets out for the wordpress world to see. Should you publish anything so raw and filled with horror and grief? In the end I am grateful I went ahead and started posting them. I am incredibly busy as Dean of Instruction at Navajo Technical College, all of us have responsibilities to our families, and wordpress can devour time, so I seldom answer the many many comments put on our blog. I have this need to try to say something meaningful, and that takes time, and if I spent that time responding to comments I would have no time to read other poets. That would make my life poorer. But the truth is that comments placed with love beneath each sonnet has been deeply moving. They have helped Ethel and I keep on keeping on, and though some days you wonder why we humans keep doing that, the answer is contained in words and voices that connect us to one another.

When this sonnet was written in August of 2010, I could tell the impulse to write sonnets about the sequence of events and emotions accompanying Kevin’s illness and death was waning as the inexorable demands of living kept dragging me through my days. When I sat down one evening and wrote it, I knew this was the last of the sequence, the reason, in the face of all our tragedies, we keep walking this good earth. A human life is not forever. We see sunlight for a day and laugh without realizing the joy we are experiencing, and then cancer or some other illness enters our lives, and we face the boundary we cannot see past. At that moment we have so little left. Pride and dreams of the future that have ticked out the clock of our lives mean less than they did before. Yet, the voices of those who have loved us and whom we have loved sound deep inside our humanity and become life’s reason, the meaning for who we have been and who we are at this moment.

I have been battling bladder cancer since it revealed itself this winter. My prognosis is positive, unlike Kevin’s, but this is a sobering time. Not only have we been with our son as he died, but my own mortality is as raw in my face as his mortality was as he slipped into a coma from which he never awoke. At such moments you worry incessantly about the closest people to you. You also wonder if you have left any legacy at all. You want to make sure the lives you have so deeply cared for are going to experience laughter that denotes joy they do not realize they are experiencing. Have you done enough? Has your life been honorable through your days? And you think about your father, who is gone, and mother, who still goes at the word, go; the love of your life; your now gone son; your wonderful daughters, and your grandchildren cusped on making themselves who they will become.

And inside your worry the New Mexico sun shines with the high desert’s magic, God’s magic, blackbirds sing liquid songs, you wake in the morning with your wife of 44 glorious years beside you, you know that you will talk on the phone to your daughters before sunset, and you hear your grandchildren in your head dancing through their prom night or chasing a kite bobbing high in a springtime sky, and you know that life is more precious than you have known and that when it is all over, you will know, in those last moment, that you have been loved and have loved. What else matters? What else truly means at the end of a long, glorious day?

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April 25, 2012 · 7:01 am

14. The Beginning of War

an epic poem by Thomas Davis

I.

Sshruunak fled high into the winter skies.
He left the concave as his blood raged fear,
Leaped from the nearest ledge into the air
And blindly flew toward the mountain peaks,
His black wings driven down so fiercely hard
He rose and rose until the air was thinner
Than what his lungs could gulp into his hearts.

His thoughts kept singing, Ssruann! Ssruann!
The dragon witch! The witch that ruled his tongue!
And made it so he could not think or speak.

At last, his head so light from lack of air
His dizziness buzzed weakness in his wings,
He wheeled toward the peaks, in moonlight, far
Below him, silver shining light on snow.
He drifted, thoughtless, like a shadow stained
In darkness of the dark beyond the moon,
Then saw, far off, long down the mountain slopes,
A fire built by a human fighting cold.

He did not think, but moved his long, dark wings
And let his rage stoke furnaces inside
His hearts. Humiliation was a fire
That violent death would turn to triumph born
When dragons ruled the earth with claws and fire!
He rumbled deep inside his chest and roared!

II.

Ruarther felt as if he’d fought a war.
He looked at Cragdon’s haggard face and grimaced.
They’d moved on crusts of hardened snow that caved
Deep holes they had to clamber out of shaking.
They’d labored upward, slow as creeping turtles,
Until they’d seen the ridge that jutted black
Against the blinding light of sun-struck snow.
Night cold had burned their faces with its knives
When, at long last, they’d reached the ridge and trees
With limbs that they could use to build a fire.
The weariness they felt was like a weight
That would not let them move their arms or legs.

When Cragdon saw the distant puffs of flame
That flickered all along the mountain’s slopes,
He only motioned as he pointed at the lights.

“What’s that?” he croaked, his weary voice half dead.

Ruarther forced himself to stand and stare.
He listened to the wilderness’s silence,
Felt strangeness make him grab his bow and crouch,
His eyes a restlessness scanned at the sky.

“Your bow!” he hissed at Cragdon. “Hurry! Now!”

He saw the dragon as it flew at them,
Its blackness huge inside the moon’s bright light.
He notched his arrow at the hurtling blackness
As Cragdon, suddenly aware of death’s
Black dragon hide, let go another arrow.
The dragon roared, its roar so threatening and loud
It made Ruarther tremble from its rage.
He turned and saw the space between the boulders.

“Behind the stones!” he yelled. “Our war has come!”

III.

An arrow skipped a half inch from his eyes
Off scales into the dark, but then another
Burned into his right eye’s pupil, sending
Gross streams of blood and pain into the wind
His body made as wings beat hard and fast.
Flame spewed into the dark toward the midgets
That tried to flee his might behind huge rocks.
He roared his rage and pain and soared as ground
Brushed hard and cold against the tip of wings
That lifted him. He hated humans! Death!
He raged. He was of dragonkind, a brother
Of death, destruction, hate, and ancient rage!
He wheeled toward the puny men again
And roared as if his voice was dredged from realms
Where humans congregated past their graves.

IV.

He would not be afraid again, Ruarther swore
Beneath his breath behind the boulder’s shield.
He glanced at Cragdon, saw the dragon’s breath
Had seared the bobcat coat he wore, exposing flesh.
The campfire burned its cheer into the night.

He heard the dragon turn and waited, breath
Forgotten as he tried to time his move
So that his strength could send a deadly arrow
Into the dragon’s eye and make it flee.

The dragon’s wings were loud. Ruarther moved
Into the open, saw an arrow buried
Inside the dragon’s right eye, drew his bow,
And tried to drive another arrowhead
Into the same eye spewing dragon blood.
The dragon’s flame enveloped him with agony.
He could not hear or see the dragon rake
Its legs into the surface of the snow
Or see a second arrow’s shaft protruding
Out from the dragon’s eye, blood staining snow.

V

Sshruunak’s pain flared as if the universe
Had disappeared into a blood red fire.
He felt wings drive into the freezing snow
And barely lifted from the ground where death
Was waiting. Claws extended, pain a haze,
He tried to rake the flesh he’d burned with fire.
But dragon will was not enough to let him wheel.
I’ve damaged both my wings, he thought. Both wings.
He flew toward the caves and thought about
Ssruann’s last words she’d used to silence him:
“The girl is one of us,” she’d said. The prophecy
A geas that led him in his foolishness
To court his death confronting puny men.

Click to hear an audio of this section: The Beginning of War

Note: This is the fourteenth installment of a long poem. Inspired by John Keats’ long narrative poem, Lamia, it tells a story set in ancient times when dragons and humans were at peace. Click on the numbers below to reach other sections, or go to the Categories box to the right under The Dragon Epic. Click on 1 to go to the beginning and read forward. Go to 13 to read the section before this one. Go to 15 to read the next section of the epic.

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April 21, 2012 · 9:10 am

Shining Waters and Sonnet 44

photograph by Sonja Bingen

This photograph was taken after the memorial for Kevin Michael Davis, organized by Sonja and Mary Wood, our daughters, was held at Newport Beach on the tip of Door County in Wisconsin, one of Kevin’s favorite places when he was a child and young adult. This beautiful place looks out on Lake Michigan and is filled with the sounds of birds and lapping of waves on sand and wet, black stones. Passing ships are often small dots on the distant horizon.

Sonnet 44

by Thomas Davis

To sum an individual life with words
is like endeavoring to touch a hand
through shadows on a wall. Like falling sand
words flow around our substance; sounds unheard
dance symphonies of brilliant mockingbirds
into an absence; moments fade into a fairyland.

Our son was loved; he loved; he made a mark
in web design, fought deep depression, wrote
some poems and essays, loved to walk the dark,
taught everyone around him, wore a coat
of many-colors from the spirit of his heart,
and blessed his father, mother as he taught

us courage as he faced life torn apart.
His death left us bereft, alone, distraught.

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April 18, 2012 · 7:08 am

13. The Substance of Light

by Thomas Davis

The frost upon the window melted, Wei
Stared out at evening skies and watched as dragons
Launched flight from caves in numbers greater than
She’d ever seen before, their colored scales
Dramatic in the sunset’s streaming fires.
She wondered what was wrong. They all seemed stressed,
As if they had to flee their underground.
She watched to see the golden dragon’s scales,
But if she flew, she flew outside Wei’s sight.
She watched until the shadows brought the night,
Then went to sit beside the fireplace fire.

In front of warmth brought by the cheerful flames
She felt half dazed, as if the day’s events
Had been too much, and now she wanted rest.
She looked down at her fingers, made a bar
Of light stream out into the darkness, held
It in the air until it looked as if
It was a substance rather than a stream of light.
She smiled, then stopped the motion made to make
The light. The light fell down and clinked on stone.
Her mind was suddenly awake; a chill
Made hair behind her neck stand up and tremble.
The bar was fading on the floor, the light
Bleached out, its substance round and strangely long,
As if its substance was not made on earth.

She put her legs beneath her, stretched her hand
Toward the substance made from light she’d made,
And gingerly, as if it might be hot,
Touched light congealed into a strange, long rod.
The rod was warm and seemed to still contain
A memory of light that it had been.
She sat back, saw the golden dragon’s eyes
Stare as it flew so close above her head.
She felt the darkness shift, as if her time
Was not the time where she was at inside
The cottage built below the dragon caves.

She made another stream of steady light
And welded it into the rod she’d made,
And then she made another rod until
She had a rabbit cage designed to capture
The meal she had not had for much too long.

She looked toward her mother’s empty bed
And saw her mother faintly in the dark.
Behind her mother, coaching her, his hands
So large they seemed as if they had the strength
To hold the world, her father, dead so long
She only had the vaguest memory
Of what his face had looked like during life,
Was pantomiming every move her mother
Was making as she sent the moves to Wei.

Wei gasped. Her mother looked into her eyes,
Smiled sadly, let the dark intensify,
And left the room to emptiness and night.
Wei felt as if she’d never move again.
She glanced toward the rabbit trap she’d made.
Her mother, from her grave, had made her daughter
As powerful a witch as ever lived.
She felt the song she’d sing to bring the rabbits
To where they’d find themselves inside her trap.

She felt so restless that she rose and walked
To where the window looked into the night.
Outside she saw the flames of dragon breath
Light up the darkness like the fireflies did
On summer nights. A dragon knew no fear.
Their largeness dwarfed the strength that humans had.
What madness made them fireflies in the dark?

She moved her hands, her eyes intent on where
She’d seen her father and her mother’s forms.
She concentrated on the golden dragon’s scales
And let her fingers shoot light through the air.
A golden scale, as hard as iron, suspended air,
Burned with a light so bright it blinded Wei.
She brought the scale onto her arm, singed flesh,
The smell and pain tears running down her face.
She felt so strange she thought she heard the stars
Sing songs of dragon fire into the night.
Her tingling arm felt like it was not her,
But separate, more dragon than a girl.

The light stopped flowing, made her gasp;
She slumped down to the floor, her consciousness
A dream she’d conjured from her mother’s grave.

Audio of The Substance of LightVN800015

Note: This is the thirteenth installment of a long poem. Inspired by John Keats’ long narrative poem, Lamia, it tells a story set in ancient times when dragons and humans were at peace. Click on the numbers below to reach other sections, or go to the Categories box to the right under The Dragon Epic. Click on 1 to go to the beginning and read forward. Go to 12 to read the section before this one. Go to 14 to read the next section.

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April 14, 2012 · 7:56 am

Sonnet 43

by Thomas Davis

Grief leaps from cracks and corners, as I walk
or sit beside our window looking out
toward the mountains, like a fierce-eyed hawk
that slashes from the sky and grabs a trout
that flips and struggles as sharp talons snuff
light out of day, the beating from the heart.

Grief seizes life grown wearisome and tough
beyond all hope that might one day jumpstart
time’s stream and let the sunlight filter down
into the shadows, wakening the joys
that often went unnoticed as I walked on ground
made blessed by my wife, girls, precious boy.

The gray miasma leaps from corners, cracks.
I startle as the sun turns dark, then black.

Note: There are two more sonnets in the sequence I have been posting for months now. Most of the sonnets were written while Ethel’s and my son, Kevin Michael Davis, was in the hospital or at home under hospice care. These last sonnets were written shortly after his death a little over a year ago.

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April 9, 2012 · 6:51 am

12. Weaving and Dragon Song

by Thomas Davis

Ruanne sat by the small triangle window,
The morning light a comfort past the storm.
She pumped the small wood loom and fed the strands
Of hair from mountain sheep into the shuttle,
Her hands in constant rhythm as she wove
Each row of heavy cloth into a rug
That metamorphosed howling winds and clouds.

She tried to concentrate upon the wisdom
Of Selen who, upon her loom, had woven
The weaving of a man and woman’s flesh
So human love could populate the world,
But all her efforts skittered like the beads
Of bear grease on a blazing, black iron pan.
Thoughts turned to images: Ruarther caught
By madness, storming from her life to wilderness,
Snow fields a glittering in morning light.

A knocking broke into her reverie.
She deftly tied the weaving so the row
Of gray and blue would stay in place for later,
Got up, and greeted Reestor at the door.
The old man looked pale, weary in the light,
His deep eyes ringed below white eyebrows sweeping
Toward white hair that covered half his forehead.
She smiled and stood aside to let him stomp
Into the cottage, cold around him biting
Into the room warm from the morning fire.

“You’re early for your rounds,” she said, her sadness
Surprising her inside her too soft voice.

Inside his heavy coat he looked more like
A bear than just a man, she thought. A wildness clung
To all the men who hunted for the game
That let the village live through winter storms.
She wondered if she ought to leave her cottage
And make the journey to the nearest town.
Ruarther was the one who’d kept her here.

But now? She smiled as Reestor growled as if
He truly was a bear. He shrugged his coat
Off shoulders strengthened by the years he’d spent
Outdoors before they’d made him village leader.
He walked toward the fire, put out his hands,
Then turned to look into her dark green eyes.

“I saw my father and my brother die,” he said.
“I didn’t live here then. I moved here later–
When Mother couldn’t stand the thought of Breenan.
Two dragons came upon the town all fire.
You seldom saw more than a single dragon then.
My father took his great long bow and hit
The older dragon, Pphhitin, in his one good eye.
The younger, Mmirimann, went wild
His breath so hot it fired the town’s wood roofs;
His claws sent dozens to their early graves.

“The great green brute not only burned our house,
But Mmirimann flung down upon my father,
The dragon killer, scorching flesh with fire.
He left the body black as smoky quartz,
So burned light seemed translucent through
The skull left bare without a shred of flesh.
The smell still visits me at night sometimes.
My brother tried to drive a metal spear
In Mmirimann, but didn’t have the strength.
The dragon swatted him away and speared
A broken rib into his young man’s heart.”

Ruanne stood silent, waiting. Reeston looked
At memories he’d long ago suppressed.
He suddenly looked up into her eyes.

“I don’t like kings,” he said. “The rich men live
Rich lives while those of us who find survival
In places where the rich would never live
Develop bonds much stronger than privation,
But Clayton’s Peace has given us good lives.
No human, or a dragon’s, died from war
For nearly all the years I’ve lived. But now…”

Ruanne still did not speak, but waited, spirit
So taut it seemed as if she ought to scream.

“We see more dragons in the sky each year,”
He said at last. “They have evolved, and we
Are still the humans that we’ve always been.
Ruarther’s craziness will stir their hearts
And bring about rage we have never faced.”

Ruanne let out the breath she’d held too long.
She shook her head. “I know,” she said. “But what?”
She paused. “The witch’s daughter shouldn’t die.
The children in the village shouldn’t face
The rage of dragon fire and raking claws.”

Determined, Reestor looked at her. “You know
The Dragon Songs,” he said. “You’ve heard them sung
Inside your head. You have to let them know
Ruarther’s left our village, lost his mind…”

“I’ve never said I hear the songs,” Ruanne said softly.

“I see it in your eyes, the way you shine inside,”
The old man said. “I’ve lived too long a life.
I hardly sleep, but still, you’re like the witch’s child.”

His words struck like a blow. She was a witch?

“Ruarther’s left me all alone,” Ruanne said.
“I’ve loved him since we both were children… babes…”

“He’s gone, Ruanne. You’ve got to let him go.”

“I’ve never spoken to a dragon, never…
They’ll never answer me… they’ll never hear…”

“You’ve got to try. The children don’t deserve
To die because Ruarther caused a war
That humans cannot hope to ever win.”

Ruanne escaped from Reestor’s burning eyes
And looked at where she’d sat upon the loom.
She shook her head. What could she really do?
She said a silent prayer to sagacious Selen.
She’d always forced the dragon’s songs away.
She was her mother’s child, not witch’s sister.
She’d known the mountain witch, but never once
Felt like they had a bond of flesh or blood…
She looked at Reestor, panic in her eyes.
She talked to dragons, villagers would drive
Her into wilderness, hate’s refugee.

The village children couldn’t die, not if
She had abilities that might protect them.
The old man looked past eyes into her heart.

Audio of Weaving and Dragon Song

Note: This is the twelfth installment of a long poem. Inspired by John Keats’ long narrative poem, Lamia, it tells a story set in ancient times when dragons and humans were at peace. Click on the numbers to reach other sections, or go to the Categories box to the right under The Dragon Epic. Click on 1 to go to the beginning and read forward. Go to 11 to read the section before this one. Click1 13 to go forward to the next section.

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Filed under Poetry, The Dragon Epic, Thomas Davis

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