Dragon Engine

Damp-swathed cottage in Somerset, 
where fog pulsed against the windows 
like the thick breath of some dying beast.

The house seemed trapped in the afternoon half-light, 
all colours dulled in the absence of sun.

We ran along the old gauges, 
voices swallowed in the mist 
to muffled, directionless cries.

The old engine sat slumped on its tracks;
scaly, rusted, scabbed, a sulphurous sleeping giant.

Inside the gears and wheels stuck fast, but the 
furnace door swung open to a dark and sooty absence
where once fierce flames smelted the hoard of glowing goals –
 
a dragon-belly breathing fire, charging across the downs,
cutting a glow through the fog with distant heaving sighs –

A tremor, 
a rumour, 
approaching 
and screaming 
and

gone.


Laura Cooper 2