Keren Dibbens-Wyatt – Poet

Dragon shifts from one haunch

to the other, adjusting weight

for the care of treasure sores.

There is an oval warmth forming,

soon she will incubate another.

In the distant blue-hour light

dark crenellations jigsaw

a false horizon, guarded,

as everything, by men

holding restless spears.

She knows, one day hence

when all is shed abroad,

every word cast, gleaming

into greedy palms, into minds

that value glint but never gold -

even this heart, carrying all

her precious memories of them -

will be stolen from under her:

a rattling box become

a necklace of egg-teeth

jangling against a burglar’s jerkin

flecked with ale and stale laughter.