Dragons of Spring Dawning

Kitiara, of all the days these days

are locked in dark and waiting, in regret.

The clouds obscure the city as I write this,

delaying thought and sunlight, as the streets

hang between day and darkness. I have waited

past all decision, past the heart of shadows

to tell you this.

In absences you grew

more beautiful, more poisonous. You were

an attar of orchids in the stemming night,

where passion, like a shark having found a bloodstream

murders other senses, only taste preserving,

buckling into itself, finding the blood its own,

a small wound first, but as the shark unravels

the belly tatters in the long throat’s tunnel.

And knowing this, the night still seems a richness,

a gauntlet of desires ending in peace,

I would still be part of these allurements,

and to my arms I would take in the darkness,

blessed and renamed by pleasure;

But the light,

The light, my Kitiara, when the sun

spangles the rain-gorged sidewalks and the oil

from doused lamps rises in the sunstruck water,

splintering the light to rainbows! I arise,

and though the storm resettles on the city,

I think of Sturm, Laurana, and the others,

but Sturm the foremost, who can see the sun

straight through the fog and cloudrack. How could I

abandon them?

And so into the shadow,

and not your shadow but the eager grayness

expecting light, I ride the storm away.