BLUE HAZE
Dragon Sky Reddening clouds roar across the sky behind a wooded hillside and a cottage backed against a cliff, half-hidden by
a curving copse that looks like a hand inside a furry mitten, or maybe a mailed fist ready to reach for the dragon’s neck, spill blood,
as the red door suggests, and the chimney stack, and the lit window’s solemn wink that, yeah, I know you, dragon howl, the heat, the hurt,
no different from the rage of those who scapegoat others for childhood loss—like the homeless man who rants unseeing from a neighbor’s step,
Whores! Bitches! Why does no-one help?— who accuse the once welcoming cottage of coldness, beset by dragons inside their heads. Like me. –after Sunset, a painting by Ralph Albert Blakelock (1847-1919)
© liveencounters.net POETRY & WRITING Volume Two December 2021 Celebrating 12th Anniversary