I Will Draw a Dragon

These thirteen lines say exactly what I wanted to say.

I.

I will draw a dragon
soft lead on white
one line insinuates
an arch for wings
spines like jagged script,
talons etched into the fiber
and there — a smudge
the dragon's coal-dark eye
hatch of smoke and shadows
the paper coils
scales limned with fire
the tooth of my pencil
hisses a spell for flight

II.

I don’t consider myself too much of a poet, but sometimes a thought or an image emerges in verse. I play with the words for a while, until it makes me happy enough, and then I shove the file away in the back drawer of my hard drive.

This one is pretty old, ten years at least. I showed it once to a friend more rooted in poetry than I am, and she said it was good, now keep going.

I wasn’t exactly sure how to keep going, though. I had already, in these thirteen short lines, expressed the idea I had in my head. I understood she wanted me to expand on the metaphor, dig deeper into myself, find more ways to explore the creative urge depicted in the poem and how it was personally relevant.

But all that seemed like a lot of effort for a relatively simple idea. So I shoved the file away in the back drawer of my hard drive.

Recently, though, I’ve begun to understand that poems don’t have to be long and elaborate in order to be meaningful. Some people love long and elaborate poems, reading them as well as writing them. But I don’t — and that’s OK!

These thirteen lines say exactly what I wanted to say.

I don’t honestly know if this poem is a good one or not — how does one ever really know if a poem is a good one or not? — but I do know that it has value, just as it is.

III.

It was a rough autumn for me, following a rough summer. Like a lot of people, I’ve been struggling with burnout, complemented by a couple of physical ailments that took the wind out of my sails for a few weeks at a time. I’m feeling better now, and knee deep sludge of put-off work has finally ebbed away, leaving me with more focus and energy to think about how I want to proceed towards my non-day-job ambitions, of which this newsletter is a piece of a multi-faceted puzzle.

Like many writers on Substack right now, I am considering my presence here. The question of whether or not the platform should allow neo-Nazi publications is drawn sharp in black and white by some commentators, and in shades of gray by others. Let me be clear: I don’t want my money, or yours!, going to support fascists by any means, even the indirect “your payments support the platform” sort of way. So I won’t be turning on subscriptions here on Substack until such time as they change the powers that be change their mind about the issue.

However, I do still want to build an audience for my writing, and Substack right now seems the best tool for me to do that. There are other mailing list services, for sure, but they don’t offer what Substack does in terms of community. I did not come here with a pre-existing mailing list, so the built in methods for discovery (search, recommendations, comments, notes)¹ are essential to what I would like to build. If at some point my list gets large enough that paid subscriptions seem a viable option, I will consider alternative places to host the newsletter. Is the magic number 100 or 500 or more? I don’t know — I am probably not going anywhere in a hurry though.

As for what you’ll see on this newsletter, well, it’s a work in process. Forest of Distraction posts will continue in the new year (hopefully two a month) along with more personal reflections about writing, fantasy, and magical living, and a sample of my own creative work along the way.

I promise that not every thing I send you will be me talking about what I’m going to send you. I have been busy sketching dragons for months, I think, but now I am ready now to take flight. I hope you’ll continue to fly with me!

1. Thank you to everyone who has subscribed in the past year! Your support is more valuable than you can imagine!