The mornings are boring,
Gray and black,Like a dark pile of ash,
He’s happy to breathe fine,
A gust of big smoke inhaled.
A big breathe, he spreads his wings wide.
He breathes and the fire comes out.
Laying on the floor,
He puffs smoke out his nostrils,It is the dragon way,
Wishing he could fly more,
He has green wings,
And is different from the others,
By the hurt wing, with a chunk taken out.
Dragon wings he calls them,
He tries to life his wings,He wears a cloud of concern,
Weeping when the mornings come,
To the air he returns,
Plunging face first,
Breathing fire and smoke,
Flapping his wings,
He takes a leap of faith.
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Waterwings
Cathy Song
The mornings are his,
blue and white
like the tablecloth at
breakfast.
He’s happy in the house,
a sweep of the spoon
brings the birds under his
chair.
He sings and the dishes
disappear.
Or holding a crayon like a
candle,
he draws a circle.
It is his hundredth dragonfly.
Calling for more paper,
this one is red-winged
and like the others,
he wills it to fly, simply
by the unformed curve of his
signature.
Waterwings he calls
them,
the floats I strap to his
arms.
I wear an apron of
concern,
sweep the morning of
birds.
To the water he
returns,
plunging where it’s cold,
moving and squealing into
sunlight.
The water from here seems
flecked with gold.
I watch the circles
his small body makes
fan and ripple,
disperse like an echo
into the sum of water, light
and air.
His imprint on the water
has but a brief lifespan,
the flicker of a dragonfly’s
delicate wing.
This is sadness, I tell
myself,
the morning he chooses to
leave his wings behind,
because he will not remember
that he and beauty were
aligned,
skimming across the water,
nearly airborne,
on his first solo flight.
I’ll write “how he could not
contain his delight.”
At the other end,
in another time frame,
he waits for me—
having already outdistanced
this body,
the one that slipped from me
like a fish,
floating, free of
itself.
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