The DVersePoets prompt was mentioned to me last night while I was waiting for the Augusten Burroughs reading to begin. It was a moment of serendipity, as I had some lines rolling about in my head yesterday that I couldn’t get to behave in any manner that made sense. Once we started talking about this weeks Dverse Sendak prompt I knew exactly what i wanted to do. I do hope you like it…
I think this is probably my first children’s poem. It took me about three hours to write it, mainly because of the rhythm and the rhyme. I started going for an actually structured ballad stanza but the words just wouldn’t behave. This does have a sort of rhythm to it, but it morphs from beginning to end. I’ve have a mind to record and put the recording up here…(edited) upon request I’ve recorded this and inserted it at the bottom of the poem for your enjoyment :)
artwork by Aisling Weaver
♦
Of Tiny Roars and Dragon Wings
One Sunday morning two children played,
while enjoying the sun of a bright and beautiful day.
They stopped at some flowers and picked one, two, then a third.
Sam asked, “Winnie, is a dragon like a bird?”
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“Do you mean,” Winnie replied,
Tilting her face up to the sky,
“are their bones hollow, and light of weight,
and have they voracious
appetites they must sate?”
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Sam lifted a feather,
an eggshell, half a nest.
“Yes,” he said,
“And what of the rest?
Can they fly and do they fish,
Do they swim, could one grant me a wish?”
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Winnie plucked a four leaf clover
and handed it to him.
“You’ll have to use this for your wish,
dragons can be rather grim.
But yes they swim and fish and fly,
Most anything else I’d say.
Though from my books it seems
dragons are quite rare today.”
↔
Sam frowned, and stomped and kicked a rock.
Winnie hid a small smile.
They walked and walked and did not talk
until they must have gone half a mile.
At last he looked up in the trees
at the trill of a mockingbird’s song,
”Well, Winnie, is a bird anything like a dragon?”
↔
Winnie looked up and thought for a while,
“If you mean,” at last she said,
“do they hunt for meat and breathe great fire,
No, I’m afraid, if they did we’d all be dead.”
“But, Winnie, tell me, do they roar?” said Sam, still full of hope.
Winnie smiled, “Yes, but little roars out their tiny, little throats.”
↔
Sam crouched and grabbed a flat, thin rock with a dragon wing embossed.
“Winnie look!” he called and held it up, “I think I’ve found what we have sought!”
Two finches dove bravely down at Sam from a nest high in the tree.
He ducked and ran and Winnie followed calling, “Yes, we’ve victory!”
↔
The tiny terrors chased them off with beating wings and tiny roars,
fiercely brave and determined to chase off this threat of war.
Winnie and Sam thundered home with peals of laughter and endless glee,
their prizes clutched in their hands as they ran from beneath the trees.
↔
Smudged with dirt and sweat, sun-kissed,
they scrambled in the door,
rolled through the house like tumbleweed,
left muddy footprints across the floor.
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They found their mom snuggled still in bed,
and pounced upon her there,
spun their tale of dragons that roared and tread
in the forest where they dare
to seek her gift for Mother’s Day
of flowers and a dragon’s wing
seared into a rock and found by them
under a tree beside a stream.
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As requested by a few readers, below is a recording of the poem above. It’s no professional reading, but I do hope you enjoy :)