Sympathy for the Dragon

They battled on my father's mantel more than half a century ago. Now they battle atop my writing desk. The conflict looks much different to me now than it did then.

Today my father, who died nearly eighteen years ago, would have been ninety years old. When my mother finally passed away, my siblings agreed that I should take my father’s prized Hummel figurine of St. George fighting the dragon. He collected a village’s worth of Hummels over the years, but this, as far as I know, was the first he ever owned.

Roses for the dragon. Photograph by William Shunn.

They battled on my father’s mantel,
the porcelain youth with broken blade
astride his rampant steed,
its hooves upraised to evade
the gnashing teeth of the dragon beneath.
Word was, it was my grubby fingers
that had snapped off the sword,
my fault he found himself caught out,
ill-equipped for the fray.
The blood on those inevitable jaws
would bloody also my white hands.
How could righteousness prevail?

They battle now atop my desk,
boy, bay and beast, that lowly trinity
locked in their deadly labors,
begrimed by half a century’s exertions.
Someone at some point sent them out
for repair, the phantom blade
reincarnate and solid as bone.
The fever of youth is on the boy,
his sword a hard promise.
The horse’s hooves are poised to crush
the serpent’s rolling eyes in its skull.
It won’t be long. The snapping dragon is weary.
How can it think to fight on? ∅

Which is St. George and which the dragon? Photograph by William Shunn.

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