Dragon Moon
Near mud that is the detritus of ancient mountains; Behind hills that are the ribbed remains where continents collided; above deep folds where great forests turned to coal; Late in the day that will give rise to the last warm Full Moon Dragons appear on wings clear as antique glass. They do not whine or buzz or hum: Click-click! clacks the clockwork of those wings, a child’s toy built of metal and springs. Where do they come from? What workshop, what secret cave where Q or Batman or Da Vinci in his wildest nightmare dreams contrived the perfect flying machine? Wright Brothers, you were wrong. John Glenn, you call that “flying?” Yo, Chuck Yeager! Feature this: We make Mach II look slooooow, don’tcha know: This factory’s been tinkering Three Hundred Million Years.
Four wings times fifty beats a second by one thousand strong stack up seven stories high. No angle of attack too steep. No maneuver too extreme. At a-hundred-and-ten on the straightaway they corner ninety degrees and stop - with a snap! - braking on air as if air where a hard and solid thing. Back flips? Ordinary. Sideways or upside-down? All the same. While (to coin a phrase) “Eating on the fly”: Six hairy legs extend rotate and bend, knees turning into elbows, feet turn into hands, and Dragon rips with chitinous lips (like pickin’ chicken from the bone!).
Was it the tidal moon tugged these mythic creatures from egg to underwater nymph to emerge in awful magnificence? The split and empty skins from which they fly away left, waving, tattered royal pennants in wind. Or does the Dragon sally forth in his Omnipotence only when challengers appear? Poor Knight, poor dear. Or is it cogs wound to the gear by oblique forces yet to be revealed? Migrating Dragons cross a hundred leagues a day caring only that the works align, and that the flesh is fine.
The Sky
Tiny toward
Life flees
on feed
which Dragons
Alas. Tree Swallows wait above the swarm.
Those who escape the Dragon’s teeth won’t live long
< . > Meanwhile, out in the bight < . >
Where Least Tern and Osprey dive,
Stripped Bass drive up the bait.
Feathers, Fins and Scales
Armored Carapace
Hard as nails
United in One Fate.
vvvvvvvvv
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