The Dragon by Brigit Pegeen Kelly
The Dragon
Brigit Pegeen KellyThe bees came out of the junipers, two small swarms
The size of melons; and golden, too like melons,
They hung next to each other, at the height of a deer’s breast
Above the wet black compost. And because
The light was very bright it was hard to see them,
And harder still to see what hung between them.
A snake hung between them. The bees held up a snake,
Lifting each side of his narrow neck, just below
The pointed head, and in this way, very slowly
They carried the snake through the garden,
The snake’s long body hanging down, its tail dragging
The ground, as if the creature were a criminal
Being escorted to execution or a child king
To the throne. I kept thinking the snake
Might be a hose, held by two ghostly hands,
But the snake was a snake, his body green as the grass
His tail divided, his skin oiled, the way the male member
Is oiled by the female’s juices, the greenness overbright,
The bees gold, the winged serpent moving silently
Through the air. There was something deadly in it,
Or already dead. Something beyond the report
Of beauty. I laid my face against my arm, and there
It stayed for the length of time it takes two swarms
Of bees to carry a snake through a wide garden,
Past a sleeping swan, past the dead roses nailed
To the wall, past the small pond. And when
I looked up the bees and the snake were gone,
But the garden smelled of broken fruit, and across
the grass a shadow lay for which there was no source,
A narrow plinth dividing the garden, and the air
Was like the air after a fire, or before a storm,
Ungodly still, but full of shapes turning.
SELECTED BY PHILLIP B. WILLIAMS
What I love about this poem is how the common is made uncommon, surreal even, as the unlikely scene of bees carrying a snake in a garden changes the way the speaker’s mind interprets the world thereafter. She becomes enraptured by a myth playing out before her, and the dreamscape of that rapture takes over the garden to such an extent that the air seems to be fu of smoke or dark clouds that continue to make shapes. The work of the imagination begins not with the rendering of the scene with the dragon, which is what the two sets of bees carrying the snake becomes, but with what the dragon makes mandatory after its exit: That revision of the senses takes place and, in that, revision of the world.
ABOUT PHILLIP B. WILLIAMS
Phillip B Williams is the author of three books, most recently the novel OURS (Viking 2024).
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SHARED WITH GRATITUDE
This poem appeared in The Orchard by Brigit Pegeen Kelly, published by BOA Editions Ltd., 2004. (Available direct from BOA Editions Ltd. • Also on: Amazon • Bookshop)
DESCRIPTION
“Richly allusive, the poems in Brigit Pegeen Kelly’s The Orchard evoke elements of myth in distinctive aural and rhythmic patterns. Her poetic strength lies in her ability to cast poems as modern myths and allegories. Propelled by patterned repetitions and lush cadences, the poems move the reader through a landscape where waking and dream consciousness fuse.
Brigit Pegeen Kelly teaches creative writing at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her poetry collections are Song (BOA Editions), the 1994 Lamont Poetry Selection of The Academy of American Poets and a finalist for the 1995 Los Angeles Times Book Award, and To the Place of Trumpets, selected by James Merrill for the 1987 Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize.” (Source)
ABOUT BRIGIT PEGEEN KELLY
Brigit Pegeen Kelly was born in Palo Alto, California, in 1951. Kelly’s first collection of poems, To The Place of Trumpets (Yale University Press), was selected for the Yale Series of Younger Poets. Song (BOA Editions), was the 1994 Lamont Poetry Selection of the Academy of American Poets. Her third collection, The Orchard (BOA Editions), was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, the Los Angeles Times Book Award in Poetry, and the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry.… (more)
Read more poems by Brigit Pegeen Kelly • Find books by this poet on Amazon • Bookshop • Or view my library
ENDNOTES
- This is Day 45 of Poems We Carry, celebrating the 20th anniversary of Read A Little Poetry—a living archive I’ve nurtured for two decades. For this milestone series, I invited writers I deeply admire to share poems that have meant something to them over time.
- Explore other works in pursuit of: transformation • dread • surreal • Or browse the index
- If this work resonates with you, please consider supporting the archive. Thank you for reading.
