Dragon Flight

(Art work by Chris Bilton)

03.05.24

Dragon Flight

It was a humble shack

Cirrus strands of sand skipped and sang quietly,

bird-whipped, lusciouswormed,

flibbering frilly seaweed sheaves

laid in line with the will of the winds

Sunswept and bladderpopped

this is the refuge where ghosts are seen,

where the seer lightens her heart of sorrows

in an offering of light.

Something about the light

ignored the summer season and our tryst,

roaring like a storm tide

Was the sky freezing over,

raking deco shapes, a clattering snazzy cellophane

of strange leathers, that arced over

the stasis gripping me, gape-mouthed.

You ride a flux-futtered air

as if flight would come with a soupçon more effort

it was just pausing, briefly

Now you reach the horizon, but not the hills I know

these cartilagenous ridges protect your spine

not so distant - an illusion evoked as you move - 

from that world to this.

I’d happily flee to Zagdegra but

…you tell me there is trouble?

And as I think I’d rather stay, I know we’ll go unprepared,

living on altruisms

Planning plans, yet

with more than three dimensions pulling my joints apart

just being is like mortal combat.

In this state, you can feel, understand and empathise with suicides.

The shock of real dying; its pain, trauma and

the insane notion you’d be better off

when everyone says

                                                    you’ll know and feel

nothing.

A curl of smoke pulls me back.

You’re anxious to explain and I wade

through the miasma of human thought

to reach your mind.

A wind, a storm, thrashes about us.

I suppose you’ll explain as we go,

your wings speak your intent

quick then! Suns are setting!

And there’s barely time to clutch a nodule,

a ridge on your undulating green iridescence.

Each scale flexes, riding over the next

as either side of me

the air rises and falls.

You’re so cleverly cloaked, a chameleon of cloud

swept and rolled,

ebbing back into the hissing tide of swans

coming again and again in a welter of lace

Then we’re gone