Eating the Dragon's Heart by Deborah Digges

             Flooded yard one block away.  Swamp creeping up!

Willow (Blythe doll) yesterday frolicking in my Mint for St. Paddy's Day.

Another fun coloring page.  This one was a wooly-bugger to color. :-)

My friend's camp...lots of flooding near us, but so far, we're dry.

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          (Photo found online...don't know the artist)...

Eating the Dragon's Heart

by Deborah Digges

What god left for me here a dragon's heart.  Resembling

     a pomegranate,

In a gold box.  The parchment read Fresh kill.

Eat raw or braise in oil.

I lifted it from royal foil onto my best blue willow, blood

     of the ages

seeping out across the bluest bridge.

The first bite sap-like tasted of smoke-filled rooms---

women wearing smocks unloading kilns, stone sheets

     of charcoal

crushed in bowls, sprinkled with dew

drawn just that morning from high grasses.  The second bite,

     sour as a lemon

eaten whole, the rind and all, the root

of Queen Anne's lace and goldenrod.

Still through the burning I began to understand what the

     crows were saying,

speaking in tongues, their news fraught with

     ill-fated warnings.

Never they choired, be tempted to suck lifeless sweet buds

     hung of seeds.

It is a trap.  Nor smear onto this page the juice that stains

     like afterbirth

your fingers, lest you're condemned to winery again,

lest you fall through the ice of time.

Sunk you my knees in sludge I waded bogs collecting feathers

     to be used as quills.

Then swore the pledge, kissing goodbye the last bite of my

     lover's lips.

Swallowed it whole in my green sequined dress.

Why do we offer you a dragon's heart and not a pomegranate?

To ask, one has no right to call herself a poet.

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                     My yard is full of flowers, bees, dragonflies and Hummingbirds.