Category Archives: The Dragon Epic

March 4, 2012 · 7:06 am

8. Shock and the Weirding of Boundaries

by Thomas Davis

Ssruann’s long neck jerked up into the air
And twisted to the cave’s night opening.
Outside the storm still raged and howled with winds.
She was awake, prophetic dreams had fled.
The human girl was watching as her mother
Used unseen lines between the waking world
And universes where the shadows swarmed,
In patterns sibilant with singing winds
That dragons, humans, spirit bears, and others
Who walked could not access with eyes or dreams,
To guide her daughter’s hands into the ways
Of power she had never known while breathing.
The daughter’s hands spewed webs of light.
A dance of heat ran through the webs and burned
Through cold and snow as if they’d never been,
Exposing ground beneath the piles of snow.

The Old One’s golden eyes expanded, whirled
While power flowed into the human girl.
It was a dragon’s power, power drawn
From blood more ancient than the blood of dragons
That lived inside community inside
The caves dug deep into the mountain’s heart.

Ssruann’s two hearts were beating with a force
That seemed to echo through the caves and tunnels
Where dragons waited out the storm so they
Could climb on ledges, launch into the air
To hunt for mountain goats and sheep and deer
Now hunkered down, protected from the storm.

Where did the power now inside the girl
Orginate? What did it mean? What force
Had mother’s love sent from the songs of death
Unleashed into the world of dragons, humans,
The seasons marking, marching, passing time?

A long, low wail lunged from the unseen peaks
Above the cave and rolled with fearsome winds
So filled with shards of ice it seemed as if
The mountain’s face would sheer away and leave
A grinning skull of gaping mountain bone
Into the valley where the human girl
Turned back toward the fire that threw its warmth
Into the cottage’s deep darkness, air
Alive with possibilities not known before.

Appalled, her pounding blood a double beat
That sang the history the dragon race
Had lived inside the shining web of time,
The Old One stared into the stormy darkness.
The human girl was linked to her, she thought.
Linked somehow deep inside her dragon blood.
What sorcery is this? She thought. She’d known
The mother, but had never thought too much
About the woman living in the valley
Below the dragon’s mountains and its caves.

But now? Her blood was boiling contradictions,
A moving tapestry of fear, hope, rage, delight,
A stream that made her feel sick from the strength
That surged and ebbed inside her pounding blood.

There were no walls between the universes
That never touched except in tiny whorls
That knitted all that was together, bound
By actuality, the mind of God.
The weirding of the storm and darkness raged
Inside the webs of light the young girl wove.
Ssruann, the Old One, stared and stared at where
Her cave led out into the storm and dark,
Her long neck rigid with a dragon’s fear.

Audio version of the poem: Shock and the Weirding of Boundaries

Note: This is the eighth 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, 7 to read the installment before this one. Click on 9 to read the next section.

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February 24, 2012 · 8:48 am

7. The Heat of Webbed Light

by Thomas Davis

The snow kept falling for a second day.
Wei looked at wood piled up inside the bin
And thought about the difficulty facing
Her if the wind kept growing drifts of snow.
At times the wind died down as giant flakes
Came drifting from the skies, and, looking out
The frost encrusted window by the door,
She saw how deep the drifts were piling up.
Each time the blizzard winds died down, they started
Again, ferocious, constant, howling rage.

As evening darkened skies, her nervousness
So great she felt half sick, she pushed the door.
It did not move, the snow too dense to move.
She strained to open up a crack. She stopped
And tried to force the panic rising up
Inside her chest to calm into her thoughts.

What could she do? She had potatoes still,
And onions. Though she needed meat for strength,
She would not starve, but wood! Beside the shed
Her daily work had built a high, square pile,
But if the drifts imprisoned her inside,
The fire would turn to ash and cold. What then?
She put her back against the door where cold
Seeped in. What then? The question froze her arms
And made her legs as heavy as her thoughts.

She had not cried since burying her mother,
But now she felt as if she was a little girl
Who needed comfort, needed mother’s love.
Her body heaved from sobs that made her shake.
The fire would die without more wood to burn.
She wailed aloneness, fear into the night.

She forced the sobs to end. She could have walked
The mountainside to stone built houses, walls,
But living in her dreams she’d thought her strength
Could let her stay beside her mother’s grave.
She got up from the floor and put a log
Into the embers red with dying flames.

And then, behind her and the fire. . . She turned.
The firelight dancing on the wooden floor,
She saw no source for noise. Her skin crawled, tingled. . .

Beside her mother’s empty bed the darkness
Seemed solid, like a pool that shimmered substance
Into a place where substance could not be.
Wei stared into the darkness, opened up
Her mouth and tried to scream, but silence swallowed sound.

Inside the pool of darkness, small, intense,
A light began to grow. Wei held her breath.
Her mother’s body, lined in pulsing light
Upon the narrow bed where she had died,
Began to weave her graceful arms and hands.
Wei gasped, her sudden grief subsumed by awe.
Her mother here? The storm outside so fierce?
The light glowed like her mother’s gentle smile,
And then an unreal darkness swallowed light;
Then darkness was the darkness of the night.

The sudden disappearance of the light
Hit Wei as if a fist had slammed her stomach.
The fire behind her felt as if the dark
Had fed its flames and made the cabin bright
As just before the day’s last light fled sky.
Wei straightened, looked into her hands, and saw
Her mother’s motions as she’d moved as light.
Wei walked, entranced, toward the window.
She made the pattern from her mother’s hands.
A web of burning light flowed from her fingers
Through window glass into the howling dark.
Her hands felt warm, as if the light she webbed
Through glass into the night was more than light.

The crusted frost upon the windowpane
Evaporated in the freezing dark.
Wei stopped the movement of her arms and hands.
Her mother, buried under snow, had given her
Survival from the storm, she thought. Her life.

The door would open as she moved her hands.
She’d melt a path to get more wood come dawn.
She had to think about the webs of light.
Her skill had uses she’d not understood.
She felt so tired she wondered if she’d stay
Awake enough to keep the fire alive.

The Heat of Light audio file

Note: This is the seventh 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. 1, 6 to read other parts of the epic. Go to 8 to reach the next section.

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February 15, 2012 · 7:34 am

6. The Old One’s Prophetic Dreams

by Thomas Davis

The Old One flew past layer after layer
In dreams so vivid that they seemed to smell
Of human sweat around a blazing fire
Inside the villager’s great meeting hall.
The hunter she had found out in the woods
Was pacing like a spirit bear whose rage
Had left the spirit world and slipped
Inside the human by the fireplace, hands
And gestures punctuating madness, fear.

“The witch’s child has stirred the dragons up!”
The big man roared. “The time for peace is done!”

The Old One twisted, tossed upon her bed
Of earth-warmed stone. The storm outside was raging
With winds so strong they moaned across the peaks
And slammed down slopes into the valley where
The young girl Wei slept quietly in bed.

She’d riled the hunter up, she thought. Infected
By fear she’d thrown at him with fiery breath,
He’d lost his sense of who he was and snarled
In desperation at his memories.

“Ssruann! Ssruann!” Her daughter’s rumbling voice
Cut through the layers of her dream and forced
Her from the village back into her cave.
She opened up her eyes and saw her daughter’s
Bright azure eyes above her in the dark.
The dream still heavy in her mind, she blinked
Before she spoke, then stretched her golden neck
Into the frigid air, her daughter’s eyes
Intense upon her waking, looking sharp
And piercing at her dissipating sleep.

Mmlynn has gotten larger than I am,
She thought, or else, she smiled inside, I’ve shrunk.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, her voice so loud it echoed
Inside the cavern of the stone walled cave.

Her daughter’s eyes kept staring, making
The Old One feel unnerved by youth’s strong passions.
Her daughter looked away and glanced toward
The tunnel dug between the Old One’s outer lair
And caves dug deep into the mountainside.

“Your roaring woke the dragonlings,” she said,
Then paused… “and others in a dozen lairs.”

“I’ve been asleep,” the Old One said. “I’ve roared?”

“You’ve dreamed?” her daughter asked, dread in her voice.
The Old One looked outside into the storm.
“I’ve heard you for a month,” her daughter said.
“Tonight it’s gotten out of claw and tooth.”
She paused, her sense of dread so strong it filled
The air inside the cave. “Prophetic dreams.
You’re having dreams foretelling tragedy.”
She paused, then added quickly, “Everyone
Inside the mountain knows what’s going on.”

The Old One looked into her daughter’s eyes
And tried to find the words she’d have to say.
Prophetic dreams could stir the dragon spirits,
Unsettle life inside the mountain, force
Change, roaring, breathing fire, into the world.
She slowly got up from her bed and felt
The aches of old age deep inside her bones.

“We need to bring the human girl up here,”
She said. “I’m dreaming of the human girl.”

A tiny ball of flame puffed out of Mmlynn.
Shock stunned into her eyes and azure face.
“She’d die up here!” she said, her voice severe.
“No dragon’s ever let a human climb
Within a mile of any outer cave!
The males would murder her before she drew
A single breath inside a single lair!”

The Old One walked toward the opening
To look into the storm that moaned and raged
Down cliffs and plummeting, long slopes of rock.

“I know,” she said into the moaning wind.
“But change has come, and dragonkind will change,
Or else the village humans will become
Like ravers with a rage too strong to stop.”
She paused, her voice so strong it magnified
The noise the wind made as it swept up snow.
She turned back to her daughter, forcing down
The roaring in her voice. “The girl is strong,
But weak,” she said at last. “I’ve tried to stop
The dreams, but every night they’re more intense.”

Mmlynn kept staring at her mother. Dreams
By dragons who had lived so long, that came
From layers far below their consciousness,
Could never be ignored. Their prophecies
Came from the minds of all the dragons living
Inside the mountain’s winding tunnels, caves.
Her mother, even when she’d been too young
To be a dragon dreamer, had the dreams
No dragon dared dismiss if dragonkind
Could keep their ancient sentience and will.

“We’ll need a conclave then,” she said, her voice
So small it disappeared into the air.

Ssruann looked at the remnants of the dreams
That floated, pale with images, inside her mind.
“They’ll want to kill the child,” she said, her question
Of why she cared posed when the hunter fled
Still in her voice. “When frightened, every life
delivers death to try to stay alive.”

Mmlynn turned back toward her dragonlings.
“They will,” she said. “No matter what you say.”

She left. The Old One turned back to the storm.
How could the child survive? she asked herself.
Alone, a winter worse than any one before,
The village humans building rage against
A human child that they had never seen—

She turned back to her bed. What could she do?
She asked. What magic did the child possess?
What madness plagued her through unwanted dreams?

The storm would end, she thought. It had to end.
And then? The question settled in the cave.

Note: This is the sixth 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 under The Dragon Epic. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Go to 7 to reach the next section.

The Old One Audio

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February 8, 2012 · 6:59 am

5. Ruarther Out of the Storm

by Thomas Davis

I

Ruarther stopped inside the meadow, dread
A tingling arc behind his head and neck.
The doe was heavy on his back, but pliable,
A coat whose legs stuck out with black, sharp hooves
Above his thin, hard belly, barrel chest.
He turned to look behind him at the forest.
The clouds had fallen to the earth , were moving
Toward him. As they moved a wall of mists,
That anviled up into the day’s bright sky,
Glazed ice across the ground and turned the world
Dark, floating, hard with cold and fields of ice.
Dismay and disbelief shrilled through his arms
And spread in icy tendrils to his too loud heart.

The wierding! In his mind he saw the bear
Rise up inside the forest as he woke
And heard its roar imbedded in the wall
That slid toward him as he froze in place.
The witch’s spawn! He thought in rage as darkness
Rolled over him and ice encased his body,
Another skin so hard and cold it felt
As if he’d never move his legs again.
The dragon that had brewed his fear in vats
Prepared by witching words and weirding vials!

He forced himself to turn toward the village.
The doe had frozen hard around his shoulders.
What will we do? He asked himself. A moan
Rose from the trees behind him as a fierce,
Sharp wind that stung his ice-encrusted face
Drove snow across the meadow’s sudden white.
His legs felt heavy as he forced himself to move.
He wondered, deep inside, if he could make
The journey to the village that was left.
He’d never faced a weirding storm before.
He forced himself to run, his fear a pounding
In ears so cold they stung with savage pain.

II.

The hunters came out of the angry storm
One at a time, beards caked with ice, hands burning
From bitter cold. Each one, dejected, sat
Inside the village hall and said they’d seen no game.
Their families needed food, but as the storm
Had threatened, all the animals had hid
From searching eyes and deadly arrowheads.
At last they’d all come home, except for one:
Ruarther always brought back game no matter
What weather howled or animals retreated
To lower altitudes or hidden dens.

As Reestor donned his bear-hide cloak to walk
Toward the stone fence at the village edge,
He thought about the times starvation stalked
The mountain folk until their greatest hunter
Came bearing meat enough to keep their bellies
From shrinking during long, cold winter nights.
The hunts had not found game for much too long,
And now the winter when grim scarcity
Would stalk the village like a beast had come.

Still, no one liked the hunter—even though
His generosity was greater than
That shown by any other village man.
His pride was harsh as acid burning deep
Into the flesh, and when he spoke he made
His fellow hunters, even Reestor, flinch.

Ruanne, desirable to all the men,
Kept all of them at bay and let them know
Ruarther was the only man for her,
But even she was challenged when she tried
To soften haughtiness enough to let
Love’s light shine in her eyes and strong, wild heart.

Outside the wind blew blasts of heavy snow
In Reestor’s eyes. He leaned into the wind
And took forever crossing to the fence
A hundred yards from where the village hall
Stood sound and solid in the shrieking storm.
He stood beside the oak wood gates that barred
The dire wolves from the round stone cottages
And tried to stare into the blowing snow.
The storm was three days old and still as fierce
As dragon mothers sheltering their young.
He knew Ruarther’s strength and skill, but still. . .

The big man teased the headman’s blinking eyes.
The snow clouds cleared, then billowed white again,
Allowing, for a moment, one brief glimpse
Of brownness shouldering fresh meat, salvation
Inside a storm that promised days of hunger.
The old man felt triumphant as the wind
Shrieked like a demon from a dragon’s fiery gut.
He shoved the gate while kicking at the snow,
The snow too deep to let the gate swing open.
Ruarther, face around his eyes raw, red,
Turned sideways, slipped inside the gate, and grunted.
He looked exhausted as he let the doe
Fall to the ground, its carcass frozen stiff.

As Reestor grabbed Ruather, keeping him
Upright, the big man’s eyes locked on his eyes,
Eye whites alive and burning in the storm.

“The witch is dead,” Ruarther croaked. “Her child
Is stirring up the dragons, witching them.
We need to organize ourselves for war!”

The volume of the wind began to roar
As if the sky was gathering its force
To tear apart all life that lived on earth.
Ruarther, Reestor stumbled through the wind
And snow and tried to reach stone walls and warmth.

The dragons? Reestor thought. They’d been at peace
With men forever even though the witch
Had lived below them for a dozen years.
No villager need fear a dragon war.
He felt the weight Ruarther put on him.
The man was weak. The strongest man he’d known
Was stumbling as if he was a child.

“The bear,” Ruarther mumbled incoherently.
“I heard the bear warn of the dragon child.”

Relieved, the village hall now looming, Reestor
Felt cold blast through his body, felt a chill
Shriek through his spirit, felt an endless cold
Spread like a blanket over sky and earth.
He reached the hall’s stout door and pounded hard.
His strength was gone. Ruarther squared his shoulders
As light spilled from the Hall into the snow.

Note: This is the fifth installment of a long poem. Inspired by John Keats’ long narrative poem, Lamia, it tells a story that is 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 under The Dragon Epic. 1, 2, 3, 4. Go to 6 to read the next section.

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February 3, 2012 · 6:50 am

4. Dreams of Fire

by Thomas Davis

Wei sat inside the cottage by the fire
And wove light strands into a radiant web
That glinted firelight back toward the flames.
The web threw light into the darkest corners
And made the cottage seem as if its warmth
Was filled with friendly spirits as the wind
Blew sleet and snow against the walls and roof
And seemed intent on battering its way
Into the small, safe place that Wei called home.

At last she let the strands of light go dark
And got up from the floor and walked to look
Outside into the storm’s cold, deadly fury.
She thought about her mother’s face before
Her sickness took away her strength and left
Her pale and weary in her single bed:
Her pale green eyes had always danced with light,
Her smile so bright it banished little hurts
That little girls could always seem to find;
In storms her eyes would grow intense, alive
To clouds that sailed with lightning, dragging fire
Beneath their rumbling through a winter’s skies.
Wei sighed and shivered. Frost had caked the window
And only left a small round hole to see
The wind ghosts walking just above dark ground,
Their fleeing emblematic of Wei’s life
Now that her mother was inside her grave.

Wei’s loneliness was sharp enough to burn
Into her flesh, her sadness like a mask.
She thought about the moment by the grave
When numbness made her silence all encompassing,
Her heartbeat stilled to nothingness.

She’d thought about the humans in the village,
Considered walking down the mountainside
And telling them she was a lonesome child
And not a fearsome witch birthed by a witch,
But then she’d felt the mountain stir its rock
And touch her spirit with a spirit old
As water splashing over mountain stones.
I won’t need them, she’d thought. They’d chase me off
And treat me like the deer their arrows kill.

But by the window, looking out at winter,
She felt herself begin to shake, not from the cold,
But from the loneliness she’d felt each day
Since she had been alone, her mother gone.
She thought about the dragons in their caves,
The way they lived their lives together, bound
By memories and happenings that flowed
Into their flights above the cottage, sang
Into their daily voices as they linked
The way each dragon was into community.

She dreamed while standing by the windowpane
About a golden dragon looking fiercely
Into her eyes and saying, “Yes, you’ll do.
The elders won’t object to how you’ve grown.”
And then she felt herself spread wings of light,
Made of the light she’d strung into a web
Beside the cottage fire, and lift into the air.
She saw the cottage below her as she flew
Toward the human village in a rage of joy.

The vision faded. She shivered, turned away
From wind that howled at wind ghosts in the storm,
And went back by the fire that needed wood
She’d split if death was not to be a guest
That visited with tendrils exquisite with frost.
She felt the dullness of her hunger burn
Beneath the burning of her loneliness.

“I’ll be a dragon.” In her voice she sounded sure.
She looked at arms too thin as food had dwindled
And rabbits had become aware that she
Was not as skilled at calling them to her
As when her mother did the winter calling.
She wondered if she’d ever feel alive
With happiness the way she’d felt before.
She settled by the fire and watched the flames.

Note: This is the fourth section of a long poem I have been skeptical about publishing in wordpress format, but have been encouraged to do so. The story was inspired by John Keats’ tale in his narrative poem, “Lamia,” although this poem uses blank verse rather than the rhyming couplets Keats used. Click on the numbers to read earlier sections: 1, 2, 3, 5.

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January 29, 2012 · 9:36 am

3. The Coming of the Weirding Times

by Thomas Davis

Ruarther stopped upon a ridge, the sound
Of dragon wings behind him rising up
Into the sky, his breath so short from running
He had to kneel and gasp, too trembling
To see the golden dragon fly away.
He’d been afraid, he thought. His mouth was dry
And stomach clenched against the memory.

He failed to force himself to move for minutes
That crawled like hours as he tried to see
Why he had turned and run when flame had sprouted
Out of the female dragon’s gut into the tree.
He’d always thought that he was strong enough
To face a dragon, look it in its eyes,
And force the beast to fear his human strength.

At last he got up off his knees and looked
At skies and snow clouds massing in the mountains.
He’d been away for weeks, the game so scarce
He hadn’t even used his bow, not once.
The village needed meat. Winds gathered
And soon they’d cover mountains deep in snow,
And then the herds of deer would head downhill
And hunting would become a test of stamina
So difficult that only full-grown men
Could hope to bring home meat enough to feed
The children, women, and the older men.

The dire wolves, black with yellow, shining eyes
Would find the village too, their hunger bright
Inside their growls and nightly moonlit howls.
The harshness of the winter world would batter
The villagers and make them long for spring.

Ruarther stopped his musing, turned toward
The village, started running with a long, sure stride.
Ruanne, the girl who thought he was a fool,
Would laugh to hear he’d run from dragon fire,
Confirming what she thought of him already.
He wondered at the dragon’s curious words,
The plea to save the witching girl, the meaning
Of dragons taking interest in a human’s life.
He couldn’t let Ruanne hear of his fear,
He thought. Her yellow hair and dark green eyes
Ran with him as he jogged past tree trunks massive
Inside the forest’s twilit canopy.

As night grew out of shadows on the ground,
He stopped and built a fire. The winter cold
Walked like a forest beast whose hunger burned.
He took his blankets from his leather bag,
Edged close to where the flames danced merrily
And closed his eyes, sleep letting him forget
The dragon, witch’s girl, his fear, his dread.

Before the sun had risen over mountains
He woke. He smelled a bear. He grabbed his bow.
The world was silent. No bird song, no breeze. . .
And then he saw the bear so huge it seemed
As if it was the spawn of dragons, brown
And shaggy in the darkness, dangerous,
Eyes glowing in the moon’s dim silver light.
Its eyes looked straight into Ruarther’s eyes.
A weirding chill iced deep inside his head.

The great bear stood on hind legs eight feet tall.
It made no sound, but stared and stared at him.

And then, inside his head, a rumbling voice
Said, “Humans should beware of dragon’s minds.”
He touched his ears; he had not heard a sound,
And bears did not have speech like dragons did.

He looked around. Light crept through trees.
He thought he heard the warning of a growl,
But when he looked back at the bear, the bear
Was gone, and birds were singing to the sun.
He sensed the snow clouds not yet in the sky.

The witch’s child! He thought. The dragon, then
The bear! Strange happenings that had a pattern
As if Old Broar had cast his bones and seen
The future through his cloudy, pale blue eyes.
It had to be the witch’s child aligning
The universe against the village peace.

A smallish doe walked through the trunks of trees
Not fifteen yards away. Without a thought
He notched an arrow, let it fly at her.
She startled, leaped, crashed dead into the ground.
He’d hunted for a week, and now he’d found
His prey and felled it with a single pull.
Rejoicing started flooding through his thoughts. . .
But then, he thought he smelled the bear’s rank smell,
Felt fierceness in the coming winter storm.

He’d have to warn the villagers, he thought:
Old Broar, Ruanne, the village leader Reestor. . .
He’d have to run through several long, hard days.
Strange times were on them, weirding times.

Note: This is the third section of a long poem I am skeptical about publishing in wordpress format. The story was inspired by John Keats’ tale in his narrative poem, “Lamia,” although this poem uses blank verse rather than the rhyming couplets Keats used. Click on the numbers to read earlier sections: 1, 2, 4.

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January 25, 2012 · 6:28 am

2. The Old One

by Thomas Davis

The old one, fierce inside her double hearts,
Kept flying high above the human child
As snow whipped down from caves and jagged peaks
Into the plateau where the cottage stood.

She’d sensed the mother’s death and saw the girl
Construct a grave of heavy, rounded stones
And watched her as she harvested the garden,
Trapped rabbits, drying pelts outside the shed,
And fished in waters tumbling down the mountainsides.

At night, inside her cave where hot springs bubbled
From rocky walls, the old one’s dreams were filled
With how the human child looked as she faced
Her lonely life with only dragons flying
Above her to and from the caves set deep
In slopes so steep the mountain goats avoided them.
The dreams were like a fever, always there—
The human child so slight compared to dragons,
But real beyond what any child could be,
Her face emaciated, body starved.

Each day she flew above the cottage roof
She saw the child had made a fire and managed
To get herself through yet another night
As cold raged like a dragon spewing fire.

The humans in the valley far below
The girl stayed in their village, hunting deer
And other game, including goats the dragons
Depended on when winter frosted dragon hides.
The old one kept imagining they’d leave
Their cottages and climb the mountainside
To fetch the girl into their small white houses,
But days passed, weeks passed, a month, and then more weeks
And no one seemed to think about the girl.

At last, her dreams more powerful than ever,
The old one swooped down on a hunter far
From where the village was, her mind on fire.
The man was bigger than most humans were.
He had an arrow notched and stared at her
As wings threw shadows on the snowy ground.

“I know enough to shoot into your eyes!”
He screamed while standing tense before her scales.

She snorted smoke and dug into her memory
For human words she’d learned to use against
A foolish knight who’d sought to find her lair
In days when gold and jewels made her feel
The blazing glory of her dragoness.
Her honeyed words back then had brought him close.
He’d felt the deadly heat of dragon flame.

“The plateau woman’s dead,” she said, her voice
As guttural as water rumbling down a cliff.
“Her child’s alone and needs your human help.”

The hunter’s eyes glared fear and hate at her.
He looked as if he didn’t know if he should flee
Or stay and fight a battle to the death.

“A child?” he asked, voice hard, fear in his breath.
He seemed to search his memory to see
If he could understand what made a dragon
Concerned about a girl, a human child.

“The child above your village in the cottage,”
The old one said. “The little, lonely girl.
She needs your help to get her through the winter.”

“A little girl?” the hunter asked. His eyes grew large
As understanding dawned. “You mean the witches’ child?
The one who lives below the dragon caves?”

The old one’s fires stirred deep inside her throat.
She rumbled even though she tried to still
Her double hearts to keep the hunter calm.

“What foolishness,” she said. “A witches’ child.
What does that mean? A human is a human.
She is a girl, a human girl, and humans
Should have enough humanity to care
About their children when they face starvation.”

The hunter, frightened, drew his bowstring back
And shot an arrow at her shining eyes.
She turned her head and let the arrow bounce.
She roared her rage and sent a spume of flame
Toward the foolish man and set his beard
To smoking as the tree behind him whooshed
Into a puff of angry, flaring flame.
The hunter turned and ran as if he’d seen
The end of time confront him in the woods.
The old one sat and looked at emptiness.

What was a human child to her? she asked.
She’d lived through generations of the villagers.
What was a human child to her? She spread
Her wings and lifted heavily to sky.
She flew above the cabin, saw the little girl,
An axe blade swinging at a chunk of wood.

You humans are a clutch of stupid fools,
The old one thought. She flew up to her cave
And hoped she’d sleep without her troubling dreams.

To listen to this section of the epic, click on The Old One.

Note: This is the second section of a long poem that I am skeptical about publishing in wordpress format. The first section was published in this format earlier as “Dragonflies, Dragons, and Her Mother’s Death.” The story was inspired by John Keats’ tale in his narrative poem, “Lamia,” although this poem uses blank verse rather than the rhyming couplets Keats used. Click on the number to go to an earlier or later section: 1, 3.

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January 22, 2012 · 8:08 am

Dragonflies, Dragons, and Her Mother’s Death

by Thomas Davis

She looked at all the red-eyed dragonflies
That hovered on the water of the pond.
Inside the small stone house, just ten years old,
But feeling like she’d lived at least two lifetimes,
She wondered how the dragonflies perceived
Her hugeness when she walked out to the pond
And stared at them, their gauze-like wings and bodies
As red as eyes that bugged out at the day.

Above her on the mountain peaks, in caves
That joined to caves through tunnels dug by dragons,
As large compared to her as she was when
She stood above the darting dragonflies,
The daily noise of dragonkind was echoing
Down rocky slopes, off cliffs too high for humans.

She wondered, looking at the dragonflies,
What she would feel if, suddenly, she grew
A dragon’s leathery wings and felt the power
The dragons felt when spewing streams of fire.

She did not look behind her where her mother
Was stiff in death, her aging face now smoothed
Of wrinkles wrought by weeks of endless pain
As life ebbed from her as she fought to keep
Herself alive so that her only daughter
Would not be left alone upon the mountain.

At last the young girl sighed. She had her chores:
She had to dig a shallow grave and find
Round stones to place upon her mother’s body.
She’d cried all day until the storm had left,
And now, inside a weariness that seemed
As heavy as the stones she’d have to find,
She had to face what was and nurse her courage.
She thought, this mountain’s home. I’m staying here.

Above the house a golden dragon drove
Its heavy wings through heavy summer air.
A rumbling echoed off the rocks and cliffs
That soared forever up into the sky.

The villagers, who lived a dozen miles away
Inside a wall of circled black, round stones,
Were terrified each time a dragon passed
Above their heads, its wing beats making thunder,
But she had always lived below the caves
And heard their moving, eating, talking noises
As they lived life the way her mother, she
Lived life, joy bubbling out of mountain stones.

Her mother would not weigh too much. Not now.
The stones she found would be much heavier.
She turned away from dragonflies and, careful
To keep her eyes away from where her mother
Looked up toward the dark stone ceiling’s thatch,
Went through the doorway’s arch outside. The chill
That night would bring was still two hours away.

She’d manage living on the mountainside,
She told herself. She’d learned her mother’s skills
At gardening and hunting game too small
For dragon’s bellies or their long, black claws.
She had a woman’s heart in spite of being young.
She went down to the shed she’d used for play
And got their spading shovel off the wall.

What should she do? She asked herself. The stones
Or digging first? She left the shed’s cold dimness
And walked down to a mound above the pool.
She wasn’t weak, she thought. She forced the blade
Into the rich, dark, mountain earth and watched
A worm slide out of sight into the ground.
She fought the tiredness in her spirit, lifted
The soil from the tiny indentation
And dug again, the rhythm of the work
A balm to memory, the single gasp
She’d heard her mother make as all her breath
Exhaled into a world she’d left unwillingly.

Night came too soon. Above her head a dragon
Flew overhead and circled, watching her.
She didn’t look at it, but kept on digging.
A moon as large as dragon fire rose red
Above the jagged peaks around the cottage.

She’d have to gather stones tomorrow morning,
She told herself. She looked back at the cottage.
In mountain air she couldn’t sleep outside,
Away from where her mother’s eyes stared sightlessly.

Do what you have to do, she told herself.
You’ll live through this. Do what you have to do.

Note: This is the beginning of a poem too long to publish on wordpress. The story was inspired by John Keats’ tale in his narrative poem, Lamia, although this poem uses blank verse rather than the rhyming couplets Keats used. To go to the next section of the epic, click on 2.

Ben Naga asked me to do an audio of the poems I have not yet put in place. I’m not sure that that is important this late in publishing the epic, but this is the audio for the first installment of the dragon epic: Dragonflies, Dragons, and Her Mother’s Death.

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