The Mighty Viking

The morning light remains a dream

And yet, not my dream

My dreams don’t look for the dawn

They ride through the night’s dark mantle

Like a tailor’s shears

Cutting the dark before me with a beam of light

Gathering it behind amidst the growls of an angry exhaust

A dragon, warning those who would follow my path

That this moonlit road is my dream, and mine alone.

In that space between the light ahead and the growls behind

The fabric of night furls and unfurls, windswept sheets

With a patchwork quilt of a hundred stories

Of other travels, of other travelers that passed this way

Alone with their dreams, in another night’s ride.

Free from the smothering streetlights that drown my eyes

I breathe in the pure night darkness, the scent of the Great Bear above me,

Wheeling in the sky pointing the way home

To Polaris

I touch in my mind the celestial doorposts of heaven itself

And then gather the reins in my fists 

Joining with the Hunter, pursuing our prey

Shadow, or Light, it matters not which

The chase is what feeds me

To race through the shadows, to feel the whip-cords of light

Lashing my back as I ride through the trees

Thundering hooves pound in my ears

Beating heart pounds in my chest

Flailing wind pounds at my face

Riding this writhing dragon as it rises and drops in the darkness, twisting beneath me to unhorse me.

I fight alone in this night, until the dragon is spent, dropping to the earth with its head atop its gilded hoard

And through the trees I break, into the calm of a mountain plateau

The moon, an arms-length away, bathes my sweating spirit in peace

I drift into a languid pool of silver night-sea, the alpine meadow grass rippling in the breeze.

I lean back, letting my mind’s sails fill with mountain air

Pinpoints of a million distant suns guide my thoughts

The open sky cradles my head

This lonely road rests my body

The crest of another mountain pass frees my soul.