It’s Thanksgiving and I’m feeling grateful for family and friends, so to all my friends out there, I’d like to share this fantasy poem with you that I had fun writing some years back with the help of my son, who was about 12 at the time.

DRAGON’S TALE

by

M.L. Anderson

 

The grayed warrior sat alone in the dark and his hands trembled with age.

Yet his eyes glittered like steel and his voice was strong with rage.

“Young punks, I’ve seen such things you cannot imagine, nor ever believe were true;

For this wide world is full of wonder and magic with creatures far greater than you.

Like the dragon!” he yelled, “Twenty feet tall, fifty from head to tail,

A fire breather with silver teeth, armored all over in bronze scale.

The treasure of ten thousand kings showed bright in its emerald eyes,

But in them no reflection of me. No, invisibility was my disguise.

I’d come in search of fabled treasure, a lost city of gold.

Such riches that beast guarded, or so the legends had told.

I crept unseen in my hiding cloak, but he heard my step and breath.

The great horned head swung towards me, spewing hot fire and death.

To the tunnel I ran, barely escaping from its maw and searing flame.

Fled for my life and soul, I did, back to the surface whence I came.”

And there, the old man’s story ended and we who heard it laughed.

Some pointed, jeered and shoved him, and said he must be daft.

He shook his head and smiled then dug deep inside his pocket

To pull from there a golden chain from which there hung a locket.

“Inside here’s a cursed thing taken out of my hide that’s proof!”

Within it lay a sharp silver blade. It was a dragon’s tooth.