betaphilings

He puts every sentence on a line by itself
and it ends up looking like a poem
an undeliberate, unintentional verse
conveying something

He double spaces and stanzas emerge
like crevasses between peaks
or clearings in the sand

In those deep crevasses
where words echo among peaks
I have heard the oratory
of a desert that can speak

In those shelless clearings
where stanzas break in sand
I have read the long beach poem
written by a foreign hand

I have heard the silence too
and marveled at those places

clearings

spaces

where I pause and breathe
in seeming destination
before continuing on

words everywhere

Dragons have existed in folklore and mythology throughout recorded history. Depictions of dragons are found in every culture, and references to dragons appear in many ancient texts. The word “leviathan,” for example, appears six times in the Old Testament. In Job 41 it is a beast whose back is formed by rows of shields, whose eyes glow like the rising sun, and whose mouth spews fire. Its powers are greater than those of humans. The leviathan is “king over all the children of pride” (34).

The dragon as slayer of righteousness also appears on ancient Iraqi and Iranian tablets which date back 5,000 years. The Persian hydra, the Babylonian worm, and the Sumerian storm god all require man to humble himself before the dragon, the ultimate symbol of strength.

The name “dragon” comes from the Greek word “derkein.” The dragon is supposed to have unusually sharp vision in the physical, intellectual, and psychic realms. In legends it is known as a prophet, riddler, and guardian of riches. In both Eastern and Western cultures, the dragon is the symbol of attitudes or habits which, although difficult to resist, must be overthrown.

Cosmic fights between heroes and dragons exist in all of world literature, especially Greek, Egyptian, Indian, Norse, and Celtic. England’s oldest recorded legend has Beowulf pitted against a dragon. Ironically, as late as 1812, flying snakes with beautiful feathers were reported throughout Great Britain. Legend has it that the Wilser dragon was killed by Welsh locals after it ate all their chickens.

Norse mythology has similar dragon tales. Vikings put dragon figureheads on the prows of their ships. The great Norse god Thor was killed by Jormungandr, a giant snake-like dragon. Interestingly, in second-century Rome the body of a 120-foot-long snake was reported to have been on public display for a hundred years, yet the largest snake known today, the python, is only thirty feet.

Of course, dragons appear in primitive astronomy and cartography, as well as in medieval art. But it was Renaissance art of the 1400s that gave us many grand views of the dragon. A favorite depiction in both paintings and sculpture was St. George slaying the dragon. Apparently, during the Crusades, George killed a dragon that had taken up residence in the water supply of a Libyan village. In 2006 the British Royal Mint created a gold coin depicting St. George slaying the dragon. Dragon iconography persists. Right now, June 2007, the American Museum of Natural History in New York is featuring a show titled “Mythic Creatures: Dragons, Unicorns, and Mermaids.”

In Provence, France, every year there is a procession at Pentecost to honor Saint Martha’s capture of the Tarasque dragon, whose father was Leviathan and whose mother was Onachus. Martha found the beast and charmed it with prayers and hymns and led it back to the village, where it was killed.

Some scientists believe that fossil remains of antediluvian creatures might have contributed to the mythology of dragons. Surprisingly, a once popular explanation for their existence comes not from art or literature but from 17th century science. Archaeologists and paleontologists of the time were intent upon locating dragon bones, the holy grail of their respective fields. Finding dragon bones would make them famous. Of course, none were ever found, but one man’s theory helped fuel their pursuit. His name was Edward Lhwyd.

In the late 1600s, Lhwyd, a British antiquary and Celtic scholar, published “The Spermadick Principle,” which held that a vast, vaporous shroud covering the earth may account for the creation of dragons. According to Lhwyd, the whole world was saturated with semen. Water contained not only the semen of fish but of birds and land animals as well. Some conjoining of semen was thus natural and inevitable.

“For centuries it had been assumed that the active power of reproduction belonged exclusively to the male. It was believed that the head of a sperm already contains a tiny creature resembling the later adult. Of course, this sperm needs an appropriate environment and nutrient to develop, which are provided by the female. But why could not the earth also contain some sort of nutrient to stimulate development, a kind of saline solution that supports life? What would prevent development of a species once the spawn or semen of a land animal had insinuated itself into the cracks and fissures of the earth? The result would not be a perfect creature, of course. Only the female uterus could provide the environment for the proper growth and development of offspring. But semen embedded into the womb of Mother Earth could accommodate to this new milieu and bring forth young. And sometimes it has not enough power to create complete specimens so that major parts of the animal could be missing.”

Again, water contains the spawn of many living things. “When it evaporates the spawn not only desiccates and dies but is transferred into a new medium, the air. Later it will be washed to the ground again during rainfalls. We should thus not be astonished by the idea that semen of various animals abounds in the vicinity of an eagle’s or vulture’s eyrie. And it surely gets intermingled before it finds its appropriate saline moisture. Similar to spawn in rock fissures, the semen of a single animal is not able to develop a complete, proper creature. But mixed with other sperms it will bring forth a monster or dragon.”

“The Spermadick Principle” was a short-lived episode in the history of paleontology, yet it garnered much popularity among scientists and laymen alike. As late as 1734, writers like Zedler were still attributing the origin and creation of dragons to Lhwyd’s theory.

Were dragons real? According to the fossil record, no. According to the cultural record, yes, dragons were and are very real. Their stories have been told for thousands of years by every culture on earth, including the Toltec and Aztec. Many secrets of the dragon could be revealed if English translations of ancient Chinese texts were made available to those fascinated by this elusive creature. The ancient Chinese water dragon, for example, was not a fire-breather but a damp, benevolent presence who makes the crops grow and keeps order in the universe. We could use some of those dragons these days.

When Oprah Winfrey interviewed Stephanie Meyer, the gazillionaire author of the Twilight series, Stephanie said that she got the idea for a book from a dream. She awoke one morning with a memory of a boy and a girl in a clearing. The image was crystal clear, and it lingered with her throughout the day, so she wrote it down, and that scene became Chapter 13 of her first book.

A similar thing happened to me right slap dab in the middle of May scoring. I woke up one morning with the vaguest memory of twin baby dragons. Where in the world, how in the world would my brain come up with a dream about dragons? I have never been the least bit interested in dragons. There is Puff from the song and Elliott from the movie. and that is all I know.

The twin baby dragon memory lingered through the day as a sort of smear rather than a clear image. I checked online and found that dragons are symbols of acute imagination bordering on the allegoric. My fascination multiplied. I felt I was on the brink of some forthcoming awareness, some bit of understanding that would link meaning to the dream.

I gave myself over to it fully, meaning I became emotionally hushed and mentally silent and empty as a blank page, which I cannot do easily and readily but I can do occasionally. Sometimes the trance-like quality of mindless scoring helps induce this state.

The words “twin baby dragons” lazed around in my brain as I continued scoring. Later that day I began to become aware of another strange phenomenon. As I got up for breaks and this and that, six words began to repeat themselves clearly: It is a sarry story mine. Now what’s interesting about that is the repetition, for one — the same six words over and over. “It is a sarry story mine.” We tend to notice repetition.

More noticeable, however, was the accent on the word “sorry.” The voice in my head was not saying “sorry.” It was saying “sarry” with a distinct Scottish brogue. Great, I thought. I have a Scottish voice in my head repeating, It is a sarry story mine. What am I to make of this?

Then the baby dragons would come to mind, and I would find myself in a whale of a quandary trying to make meaning of baby dragons and a Scottish lyricist and score essays at the same time. Soon I came to realize that a poem wanted out.

My inner poet often prefers the stricture and structure of rhymed verse. There is a limiting aspect of rhyme that keeps me off the slippery slopes of free, unrestrained, anything-goes verse where one is vulnerable to a mild form of madness. My “Pinball Nation” poem is a good example of this. It’s a great, rollicking, free-verse poem set within the confines of a pinball machine but just a tad bit wicked crazy. I blame it on graduate school. But back to the story, a poem wanting out.

I logged off my work program, picked up a pen and paper and wrote, It is a sarry story mine. The next three lines appeared instantly. About a beast what eats her kind/And how I borne to be a twin/Kept me from meeting my sure end.

There it was. A Scottish female dragon about to tell her tale. Such excitement, such delight! Droplets squeezed from a dream were appearing on a page. The rest of the poem fell out of me in about five minutes. I remember looking at my watch aghast.

I love this poem and the way it happened. “Why the Dragons Went Away” does just what the title suggests — it explains the demise of the dragons. Because dragons are allegorical, this becomes my first and only allegorical poem, significant because allegory is the highest form of make-believe. Aristotle claimed that allegorical thinking is the hallmark of genius.

No, I don’t think I’m a genius, but I do believe we all have glimmers of genius that are somehow connected to imagination, dreams, and states of consciousness. What follows is my little ballad about a baby dragon born in a dream.

It is a sorry story mine

About a beast what eats her kind

And how I borne to be a twin

Kept me from meeting my sure end

It was a time they ate they younger

So’s to quelch they burnin’ hunger

Every season another born’d

Every birth a death not mourned

Tiny tidbits teased delight

The palette of a thing of fright

A monster mother she for sure

And for her appetite no cure

Except the tiny morsels flung

From twixt her loins onto her tongue

The times they were all full of frost

And little babes they could get lost

But lost to me I’d rather be

Than chomped upon and ate by she

So slid I down the frosty slope

Onto the teat of an antelope

Who lay beside me night and day

And succored me till early May

When then my wings began to sprout

And I began to flit about

Unawares that a dragon mum

Was what I’d someday too become

And when the antelope told me this

I yelled aloud, Such heinousness!

Yee gads, ye gods! I’d rather tromp

With antelope than ever chomp

The babes I bear upon the high

No, no, not there — ye gods, come nigh!

Let me, Persillia Dragoness

Upon the ground to build my nest

And lie beneath a wingless beast

And on me babes refuse to feast.

So days they come and finally

The dragon mums no more they be

Now babes have ground on which to play

And that’s why dragons went away

*********

The original poem ended here. I went back later to see if I could coax anything more from the dragon, and this is what came of that effort. It didn’t fall out of me easily as the verses above did but took time and effort, a sure sign the words are not inspired. The playful tone is missing, and while the lines above clearly come from her heart, Persillia’s reflections here seem to come from a more distant and less enchanted place. It’s really a separate poem.

*********

What was is that in days of old

Led men and wem to be so bold

To think they was the highest thing

When all they was was lesser beings

They could not fly like dragons soar

Nor ope they mouths and like us roar

They could not run like antelope

Nor see in dark like cats do, nope

They could not speak without the word

As beasties do in every herde

The men, the wem, they’s lesser beasts

Who in this world count us the least

They has it wrong of course we know

It’s wee beasties who run the show

While men and wem walks to and fro

Wee beasties flit and fly and flow

Through magic fields and mystic whirls

The wee beasties create the world

Paying attention to repetition in a poem causes one to wonder, in this case, who the “wee beasties” are. Wee, off course, is a Scottish term meaning tiny or small. The beasties may be young children or young animals or perhaps animal familiars capable of slipping through dimensions.

Ultimately, the power of creation seems to be wrenched from the adults in this poem and given to the children, and it’s message, if there is one, seems to be a gentle pointing of the finger at adults, whose loss of touch with their inner child creates so much havoc.

The first poem, by contrast, gives us a first-hand account of why the dragons disappeared. Apparently, there was a prolonged ice age, and adult dragons began eating their young in order to stay alive.  Eventually, no more young meant no more dragons.

And that’s why dragons went away.