The Red Dragon in The Storm

The Red Dragon in The Storm.

He watched them, the insects, …the butterflies and dragonflies, as the wind tore across the land in fits of anger, strong enough to buffet a full grown man and make a shock of discomforting music among the trees. He’d had a sense they’d be here, this sheltered glade, left behind when some winter storm and the river teamed up to change the shape of things, a small sand dune that was once a shoreline and a bog that had once been an inlet. Small trees were encroaching from all sides, white alder and willow, and on the drier, rockier side, sumac sending tendrilled scouts up into the sand.

There were a few, small cattails among those tall grasses at the edge of the bog and several larger, more toward center, though they had not yet been at this task long enough to overtake the watery expanse entirely, or slowly fill it in, first with their multiplication of offspring, then with their decaying remains.

On the far edge of this miniature bog, a row of alders served as a windbreak, and beyond them, miles and miles of wild grasses and sagebrush, lichen-painted rocks and rabbit brush on treeless, basalt mountains, slopes and precipitous cliffs rising nearly two thousand feet from the river, sinewy spines carved out by eons of earthly time, and wind …and water.

A hundred yards upstream, two large, dove gray, Russian olives, dying slowly, branch by branch, planted, no doubt by someone long ago who thought to make a life here, beside this wild and generous river, deep in this canyon where the winds sometimes hold congress, raging against one another and anything that stands in their way, reasserting themselves and moving on. It is a hard land.

Imagine his delight then when, having crawled across a dozen feet of brush-pocked sand, past a hundred hunkering Checkerspots near its damp perimeter and down to the muddy edge of the bog he spied three dragonflies, one red, one brown, one blue, posting up and somehow, yes, hunting, even still, between these raging gusts, which, because of the unique arrangement of things were no more than mere breezes, mid-bog, while torments, a fly rod’s length, beyond. It was… during the lulls, a hunters paradise, less aerodynamic insects, less calculating, struggling against the buffeting winds just feet away, too busy applying aileron and rudder to even notice, let alone evade the crimson hunter who, from her steady perch most definitely saw them coming; easy prey.

This, for a hunter of a different sort, a student and would-be necromancer for whom crawling was still easy but getting back up, increasingly difficult, a boon. He was …in search of poems, you see, or at least the strands of spider silk that might become poems, given time. Time enough to find their way, to quiet his busy mind, to breathe past the recent losses of friends, the shortening realms of future …and shape-shifting fears.

I cannot quite imagine what gets into the mind of a poem hunter. Does he, or she, set off with a particular destination in mind, like a hiker, pack full of paraphernalia: rules and maps, destinations, imposed expectations, the weight of others’ approval, or the need for it?

Surely poem makers must require some sort of portable metronome, to tick out the proper rhythm, the cadence and flow that will separate this new set of words from its lowly cousin, …prose. Surely.

But this poem seeker carried a different rucksack of burdens… the weeping holes left by other humans, some who left too soon and some who simply left. Who had come, it seemed, only to offer some balm of pain, mysteries that might, given time, make more sense, lessons not yet understood.

Of course there were also the grumblings of an aging body, parts well worn and less flexible, scars healed over, though marred by limps and aches. And fears, yes always those masters of the dark arts, niggling and petulant, ever watchful, eager to whisper doubts, accuse weakness, snuff out joy.

The poem seeker tried to look past these grumblings, talk them into submission, achieve some understanding …negotiate a truce. The fears were always there, of course, and intended to negotiate nothing, but he did not want for them to count too much, and so, on the windy days, when it was far too cacophonous to tie on and toss flies or dance with trout, or listen to birdsong in desert and copse, he gathered up all of the insights he’d gleaned over all the years he’d been gifted …and went in search of poems.

And there in a miniature bog in a high desert canyon, in a lee …in a windstorm …on a day in late May, kneeling and bent low, so as not to alarm, he witnessed something magnificent, a minor miracle; a poem, recited by a dragon …within a storm.

A vermillion huntress,

perched and aligned,

perfectly still,

winds raging just beyond.

Surely a goddess,

ruthless and wise,

unmoved and unmoving.

While a creature that cannot be seen

moves wild across the land,

tossing others,

tormenting,

tumbling,

she, observes,

calculates,

waits…

ready to dart into that swirl

to capture and dine, midair,

centered,

lethal,

regal,

a pool of utter calm.

Imagine…

She understands and does not fear the storm.

He understood and so knew where to find her.

There is always a sheltered lee.

There are always pockets of calm…

Find them.

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{Pictured at top is a Cardinal Meadowhawk, (Sympetrum illotum), a species of skimmer dragonfly, perched and yet actively hunting above a sheltered bog while the wind rages just beyond.}

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