A friend asked me the other day if I wrote any poetry. I took a poetry class a few years ago, and the teacher advised us in the well-mangled epithet to "write what you know," so I spent most of the time submitting poems about dragons. I branched out once and wrote a sestina about whales. While I would love for my work to be validated by a recognized poetry journal, I had a hard time finding one with a category dedicated to earth's great flying mammals.
Legend
It was the day that hung in perfect
agony under
the heavens, and the sun sank its claws
into the plains and cast
an unfamiliar light into the world; the birds
fell silent in the red.
The earth, arrested in its turning,
trembled at the sudden sound
of wing-beats in the east—the dark and
dreaded sky-whales
had returned to face the dragons and
mock them in their keep,
and now they numbered endless on the horizon,
all eager to keep
pace with their gold-gilded leaders,
sworn into allegiance under
oaths strictly taken at the Great
Gathering in the north to sound
the depths of their devotion to the
tribe. They flew, minds overcast
by tight tremors of war—silent, swaying,
brine-crusted war-whales,
strapped with silver helmets, delicately
hammered with scrolls; red
war-paint around their eyes and down their
curving spines; more red
around each fluke, drawn in twisting
loops and circles, to keep
with old traditions. Blowholes, too,
were marked on each whale,
according to their rank, and pressed ‘round
with gold. And under
each fin, leather lashed a metal strip
onto its edge, a shield cast
in the hot mountain-fires of the north. A
hollow, steady sound
beat out across the land; whale-tongues
clicked, a martial sound
that throbbed inside their hollow
bodies, pulsing, a red
drumming that echoed through the air.
The smallest ones, cast
in doubt by their small size, were made to earn their keep
in other ways. They bore the banners,
belted tightly under
their bellies, and held the flags—a
crimson whale
emblazoned on a golden cloth. As they approached, a wail
rose up from among the mountains, a
terrifying sound
that lifted from the land’s bourne like
a ghost under
the beat of the war-drums. A winged serpent,
red
and silver scaled, rose up—a lowly
guard, ordered to keep
watch over their borderlands, hissed and
quickly cast
his eyes out to the sea; his wings beat fast, and he cast
away his post and darted back towards the
mount. The whales
soared over the spray of the ocean,
stilling their ranks to keep
to their call. In unison, they swooped
low to cross the sound,
glittering in the sun, a low murmur with
every stroke of their red-
stained wings—the stillness before the
storm, the under-
tow beneath the waves. The keep was
emptied; the dragons cast
themselves up, a surge from underneath
the earth, up, up against the whales.
Thunder deafened the air—a great sound—and
the blood ran red.
Have your dragon poems been overlooked too, fragile poet?
Send them to me and we can rejoice together.
.jpg)
