DRAGONS
Poems by Margaret Toms

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Margaret Toms came late to poetry - that is if you discount the inadequate efforts of youth. When her children were grown up, the spell of words became a compulsion and a constant preoccupation. Her work has appeared widely in magazines and anthologies.

Once a teacher, particularly concerned with remedial work, she has also an interest in music, particularly choral singing.

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Dragons

Dragons were created
from old bones, travellers’ tales,
fossil prints on a rock face -

fleshed out with fever dreams,
blow-flies, bat wings,
the lizard’s bead mosaic;

their breath in rank shadows
beyond smoking torches
reeking of fresh blood, old wounds.

Crouched behind stalagmites,
iris-fire gleaming
through sheets of wet calcite,

they loomed indistinct -
howled over still water
in lost, reverberant caverns.

Dragons, writhing
out of the waves in hazy
dawn light and evening

slithered in sea mist over
ribbed sand, rattling shingle;
smoothed out curve over curve in drying sand;

bellowed As tide beat through
caves lined with amethyst,
gold and grave goods.

Wing-beats across the moon,
marsh gas, wood-rot,
ooze bubbling sulphur.

Dragons, made insipid
for cartoon folklore,
take their revenge in dreams,

defy extinction.

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DRAGONS
Price £7.95 per copy post free (£5.30 post free to Associate Members)
Cover illustration: 3 clawed Japanese dragon by courtesy of The Mansell Collection Limited.
Publication: MARCH 1985 (51 pages laminated paperback)