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Dragon In My Dreams
A faery princess falls in love with an ancient dragon and becomes his protector.
I
I came upon a wounded dragon in the morning. He was a prince and a reptile. He was as huge as a valley, stretched across the forest floor. His golden underbelly a print of ferns. I waited for his enormous breath to blow me away, but it only escaped his lips like a sudden spray of butterflies, in many a silent whisperings into the dead of the hollow trees. This boy was handsome and maternal. And I, being lost, was in need of some mothering by a beast such as this. Without as much as a blink, I was drawn steadily into his majesty and his nurturance. Dragons can sing whole countries to sleep and with this one thought, and one breath, and I had become as drowsy as the forest in noon.
II
It began with a glint of dawn sunlight upon your emerald and golden scale, and the deep woody lens of your opening eye in the dawn shade of ferns. And the delicate blue veined mortal tissue of your flaring and firing nostrils. Your voiceless fathomless serpent's eye was old old knowledge upon the earth. And here you had been injured. I have come upon you reflected in a pond. The wooded fields my books of herbs and all the white and violet flowers springing forth, like inspirations that captured us both, my hand upon your mane. Tonight you will fly back to your jeweled cave leaving my bowels churning.
III
Together we view the world with a shared vision, sharp, collected and reptilian. We sing this knowledge through eons of swamps and land locked waters. Each scale that I run my fingers along is its own faceted everlasting jewel. And each claw and gentle grey-webbed toe unlocks a mystery to the stars. While the world dreams this night, we fly out together as systems. The psyche is a ship that sails us into the lantern lit wind of the sea shell. You are my magical monster, my gentle pillow of peace, my new belonging. You are ancient, snarly, maternal, ultrasonic, infrared, wise beyond books and most imaginings. You are far too glorious for the minds of mortal kingdoms.
IV
My ancient dragon of sadness. My inner sanctuary of guarded treasures. You are my cave of uncoiling possibilities. You will not be my slayer. I am your protector. I rest my golden hair upon your sea beds of broken scales. Your tail is my vital river of gems, your thought my rudder and your heaving sigh my only breath. You are the movement of a mountain and your sleep is disguised among the tremors that plague the hills. When you roll over the tide comes in and the earth tilts upon its axis and we are thrown up in your hot breath. But tonight I have you in my sights and the gentle circulatory blood awash through your veins is my giant ocean, that rocks and cradles us into dreams and distances.
V
Where you wander I sing you home. Where the sword strikes I bathe your wounds. Where none understand I stand beside you. Where cruelty flourishes I give you my word. There are none so helpless and tender as a wounded monster in his kingdom of solitudes. I am the ghost maiden by the fountain in another realm. After the wars with humankind, you are dreadful and beastly. You lumber towards these lands like a lonely wounded cave of sorrows. You must stay with us, here in the mist, or run the risk of an extinction, more permanent than death. For you have become the clouded metaphor of the fearful human soul, when you are simply from another reality. Each sword and book they throw at your majesty only shatters their mirrors and fortunes. |
