Came across the phrase “brother to dragons, and companion to owls” a couple of times in the past week (once as the title of a book I recently bought & was about to put on its new home: instead it’s now on the TBR pile) & wondered what it meant. So I did a wee search & located where the phrase came from … & though this didn’t help me understand what it means, it did inspire me to do a reimagining of the text around it into a semi-satisfying pome. It also feels slightly synchronicitous given we are 1/3 of the way through the final season of Game of Thrones. 

Note: Although I played some games with it, I was more interested in creating a new thing which worked than maintaining the meaning of the source material.

*****

Game of Moans

a harp mourns, my flute only weeps.
skin peels & baleful bones burn.
dragonbrother, owlcompanion.
mourn, but not beneath the sun
speak in assemblies, seeking help
constant churning, cannot rest;
days of affliction confront me.
hoped for good, only evil came;
looked for light, howling darkness fell.
wept the troubled, soulgrieved the needy
— yet none stretch a hand to my ruin
when I plea for help in my distress.
.
.

BONUS POEM: April 26, 2018

A pome about 2 sorts of home, written far away from both.

*****

Axe

i.
Our old rollie-smoking
Barossadeutsch neighbour once
told me, jokingly I suspect,
surrounded by sweet-smelling
wisps, about his favourite axe.
What a good axe it was.
How it’d been his since
boyhood; & he’d only
replaced 4 handles
& 2 heads in 60 years.
O wonderful, incomparable
eternal axe of his youth.
They don’t make em
like that anymore.

ii.
Feel like that ageless
axe — always waiting
for my head replacement
to continue being
the same old new me
of my youth