What should a dragon look like
whose myth should we believe?
Western myth has them dark green
plausible giant lizards with wings
Oriental Dragons scarcely feature wings
but writh through the skies like golden smoke
Tolkien’s Smaug rains fire from the sky
in revenge for a small burglar of his golden hoard
Chinese dragons do not hoard, but dispense good fortune
benevolently, celestial controllers of weather for good harvests
Chinese dragons’ benevolence is claimed as ancestral by emperors
dark dragons lurk in the empty spaces at the edge of Western consciousness
Whose myth should we believe
– what should a dragon look like?
© Andrew Wilson, 2025
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Lisa or Li in Poetics invites us to write about Legendary Creatures. I should remind you that I am an Old Dragon – a former pupil at The Dragon School, Oxford…