Fulfilling the poem with a haiku (bless haikus – their shortness and their ruled form saved my day) and something that has a lot of characteristics of a poem but probably isn’t; except….prose poetry has room for out of the ordinary being part of what makes it a prose poem.  You tell me.

Haiku

late thunder rolling
afternoon rain nourishes
birds fight over worms

The Dragon Returns

It was simply a question of time before the dragon showed up.  And why not.  When goddesses and wolves clamber out of computers the world twists a bit on its axis and parallel universes warp, bump into each other, tear holes in the way it’s always been, birth stars and black holes (that look like black black eyes), tangle tales from one place and the other ‘til the original story is lost with nothing to take its place – how are we to find our way? We will need new maps.  The unseen pathways followed by birds have become visible confusing pilots everywhere.  Ships sail off the edge of the world, down waterfalls that never end, Sirens summoning them to return to no avail.  We have two suns, 5 moons and a comet that circles the planet each day spraying a tail of chartreuse sparks across the evening sky. The computers have all died. Sipping Chardonnay, I sit by candlelight after dark, making marks on paper to tie to pigeons’ legs like while the never absent white wolf snoozes beside my stool at the high counter, her mistress disappeared for seven days and counting though I have sent thoughts and quarks and butterflies to find her. Still, the crickets remain singing their predictions of rain and the whip-o-will cries from farther and farther away until all I hear are owls’ call and response.  They say that tomorrow the ocean will rise.  I will find it at my doorstep, bringing whorled shells, ropes of seaweed, a turtle head with no eyes and a crystal ball.  Meanwhile I play cartographer trying to chart a way home.