POEM - Here, To Be

Here he discovered it 

because he was ready, prepared
to wear the right hat, to hear
the small smut blackened dragon, seeking revenge
for the cave
and its forced incarceration, within the
pitch dark, loveless stone, home to no one
but itself, wrong and wronged
for a lifetime or more, scorching the pink insides of itself
self-immolating 
within its own heat and moisture
to a crisp charcoaled dust

He decides here, to be

to allow its anger to proceed unchecked
for grief to be expectorated, the betrayal and 
despondent rage, to simmer
and boil, spit and spill out
magma like pools upon the earth, 
before becoming absorbed unseen, 
for dragons, 
must cry out or cry within
for an eternity of sulphur, jaundiced
without sunlight, nothing will evaporate
when there are no clouds, no rain, no rivers, no ocean, no life
everything kettled within a cavern
no way to dissolve, to absolve
no where to fly too or from

Here to place

the suffering, tender it
upon a new bed of grass, 
to rest easy with what is there
harder to remember
when it is all over, that 
that place of despair, that that past time
can have any future purpose
at all.

written April 2021
Stephen Lumb