In the Woods You’ve Shielded All These Years

It’s your subject that we’re missing,
Or something the heft and outline
Of a proper subject. You paint

Your dreams. You compose melodies
That started as random snippets
Of notes. An enormous novel

Lurks under your chafing breastplate.
You’re a marsupial hiding
A baby dragon in your pouch.

The dragon is dark. It wanders
Away from the pouch in the night.
It is neither water nor fire,

Nor even a dragon’s story.
It’s a story in your dragon
That you shield and worry about.

The story takes place in a frame
That is really impossible,
In a window sunk in the waves.

You can sit however you like,
With regard to that wave window,
Looking through it from either side.

You will notice, the way one spots
A faint celestial event
Like a far comet or eclipse

That won’t cover much, how iffy
Your perception of rare things is.
That’s your subject. It’s in the woods

The dark dragon swallowed, behind
Your glittering breastplate armor,
The story you won’t live to tell.