The Sunday Poem: Clouds From Above
Honoring all the clichés,
Evanescing like cottony candy,
Like cotton itself, soft twists torqued,
Tangled, aloft with imagined
Wild dragons–their qualia lie:
Our visions, our worships,
Are tepid, not rapid; have ice
In their bellies, not fire.
As we claw our way,
Damp and surrounded, through
Serpentine guts, grim gray tangles
Of mist, I see Tintagel’s battle
Is fought yet again:
We are lords of the sky;
We have burst from our stone;
This is dynasty.
I wrote this the last time I flew to Asia, my head still full of Chinese dragons and the tallest building in the world. As we went through the amazing-looking clouds, I couldn’t help but think how cold, wet, and basically depressing they are, even though from the ground we once thought them fluffy and warm and magical. And that led me on a train of thought about how our perspective as humans has changed, over time, and how perhaps, really, we are the mythological creatures that assert dominion over nature.
I ended up using Western mythology (Arthurian specifically) because that was the best-known clash of dragons…