Solismar The Dragon Poem by Peter Bolton

Once there was a dragon called Solismar.
It is said that his egg existed for a million years.
Lonely he hatched and alone in the cave he grew.
Knowing naught but the bats and the beasts of the forest beyond his door.
Solismar flexed his green wings and they spread until the caves could no longer hold him.
Forced to travel abroad, he came across the people of the kingdom.
They saw the monster and fled in terror as he approached.
Solismar was sad for he had no friend.

These strange little folk could build and had many mysterious pastimes.
Surely they ought to give him some company.
Still Solismar grew and when he flew gales beat the shutters in the villages and the crops were battered.
From time to time weapons stung him, as Lilliputian armies were sent against him.
Wearily he trod the forest clearings, even making them, as he tried to abate the storm of his passage.
It was hopeless and so, in final despair, he flew into the wastelands.

Tempests roared and the seas crashed onto the shores.
He scratched the hillsides, baring the native rock, as he ate his humble diet.
The heart of Solismar cooled and ice and snow began to cover the land.
Now he barely felt he could fly and, when he shook, earthquakes rocked the kingdom far away.
Palaces tumbled, and the people prayed to God.
There had to be an end and this is the end for which we are waiting.

Solismar lay in despond.
For aeons he had lain dormant in being and then at last he had come to no purpose.
For what purpose could there be?
There was no more strength than that which lifted him higher and yet higher:
he rose forever into the eternity that was his own.
They say that the sky turned green from horizon to horizon before Solismar at last faded into non-existence, and, as he left, tears fell from his eyes into those icy wastes. Tears falling like emeralds, falling as words.
These are some of those tears.