The Drake *

 

From outside I cross the threshold of your lair--

Wood stained dark and fitted with shining brass

A chandelier fired with sapphire, emerald, and jacinth

The colors fall into the carpet’s pattern

a maze woven with Old World charms

over the centuries

 

You recline--

an expanse

of scales aglitter, of long claws and fangs

smokes curl from your lips and haze up

toward the ceiling

 

Your words smolder like liquid--

tidal and binding

they roll through my bones

they whorl me with sound

 

I purr

 

 

You speak of fables and ancient riddles

of oceans years wide

and of home

lost a thousand dreams before Atlantis fell

 

A world of quiet slumbers

and forests green with silence and sunlight

 

 

You speak of love

of necks and legs, wings and tails intertwined

through the hibernation between ice ages

of waking from millennia to eyes

that scintillate onyx

ripe with reflected stars

 

I cannot remember a time before your time

or sounds outside your voice

I sleep among your embers

warm among your scales

secure in our home

 

 

 

 

* the formatting on this poem is much cooler when printed; .html just doesn't seem to get it right, nor does preformatted text, which doesn't seem to handle landscape-oriented pages; look at balloons, bridges and non-eucliean geometry for a sense of what this should look like

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