a waterlily floated silently, and nude,
she heard the strapping waterdragon’s call.
As he approached she swung her leafy hips
from side to side as if to say Hello,
far in the distance one could see departing ships
en route to the great cognac city of Bordeaux.
He spoke, a clear and timid voice there in the heat.
She cocked her pretty head to show she was,
perhaps from boredom, not opposed to meet
a dragon with a lot of warts and sharpened claws.
‘I wonder, Madam, may I rest awhile with you,
I find you quite attractive and your colours match,
the heat can be formidable when our skies are blue
and I am truly buggered from this morning’s catch.’
She nodded, and a carp swam off in hurried strides
in the direction of the weathered weir,
where fishermen had stretched brown squirrel hides
while waiting in the shade, and drinking beer.
She worried often, knowing that life can be pain,
and pollywogs were her most favourite lot,
she had the run of this big lake in the floodplain,
though from the air she was so tiny, just a little dot.
Birds liked her, calling in when breezes cooled the air,
the youngsters even sat, supported by her skirt,
to gossip and to learn and, in the end, simply to share
a measure of the day’s adventures and the hurt.
She knew the souls of toddlers and they did in turn,
the fishes and the frogs as well as feathered ones,
bring out to her some branches of the warming fern
when chills came to the waters in the land of Huns.
There was among the animals a great deal of respect
for Mama Lily and she kind of ruled the roost,
then suddenly she checked what her reflection would reflect
the day the dragon stopped her, to be introduced.
Her colour changed a little and it wasn’t due to sun,
was there a devil that had come to cause her grief,
he started talking now and told her that he would be seeking fun
and that his visit to the lake would not be brief.
It was a peaceful valley lake, there in the lower plains
and Lily spent some time with him that season.
Then came the westerlies quite sudden and the cold September rains
that’s when the dragon had to leave. He gave no reason.
A thousand moons went by and life went on, there on the pretty lake
when with a splash a bumblebee fell in the water,
Lily was startled and still dreaming, just a tiny bit awake,
nearby swam slowly and with grace her oldest daughter.
And with a cricket’s plaintiff call there was an end now to her dream
but the whisper of a name did fill the air,
from the depths that were unknown, from a strange artesian stream
came a hairy dragon looking like a bear.
All the birds came down to sing now and the fishes swam around,
they had seen that one of theirs had now come home.
Three gray Mallards marked the space with their own feathers in the ground,
forty beavers, helped by Muskrats built a dome.
They would meet there every Sunday, all the critters and the birds
and for years the chatter echoed through the pines,
it is said both kindred spirits never did run out of words
and they live there where the sun forever shines.