Amethyst Review

The Dragon at Lane’s End

Ron Wetherington

It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, 

if you live near him.

J. R. R. Tolkien

They said it had been lurking there for decades, in the abandoned house at the end of the short lane. I’m not sure anyone had actually seen the dragon. No one I spoke to had, anyway, except maybe Billy Hogan, age 12. When I interviewed him he hedged a bit. “I might ‘a seen part of him,” he offered, not looking at me directly but rather down at his hands.

“Which part?”

“Well,” he mumbled, “his tail.” He looked up at me. “Or part of his tail, not the end.” He returned to examining his lap. Billy clearly didn’t want to talk about it, but I couldn’t tell if it was because he was frightened or embarrassed. Or making things up.

I had to piece this story together from several accounts, and most people willing to say anything about it spoke reluctantly. Everyone, though, admitted that accounts had been lingering for as long as they could remember, surfacing now and again in whispered talk. Never introduced directly. 

“I remember my granddaddy mentioning it,” Edna McCreary told me. She must be in her eighties. “He saw him a couple times.”

“In the old house?” I asked.

She hesitated. “Not in the house. He was always outside. Once on the porch.” She was pouring us tea at her kitchen table. “One time it was in the side yard, under that old oak.”

“Did he say what it looked like? How big it was? What color?”

“Well, he said he couldn’t see it really well.” She sat at the table. “It was early evening, first time.” She took a long sip, cautious about her words, or maybe just trying to remember. “Same color as the ground, or the tree, sort of gray.” She looked over at the hound lying near the stove. “’Bout the size of old Duke there,” she nodded. Duke raised his head and looked at her. I figured Duke was about three feet long, sixty pounds or so. “But longer, with its tail,” she added.

“How about the second time?”

“That was on the porch. Just lyin’ there. Nose between the slats of the railing.” She looked at me curiously. “You writin’ a story ‘bout the dragon?” She frowned, as if to scold me. I nodded but didn’t say anything. “Nothin’ to write about,” she said.

No one else I spoke to had any direct accounts of the dragon. The townspeople were aware of it and kept it in mind, but not close to mind. Strange. Winton is a town of several thousand people and one matter-of-fact dragon. And what about the house?

“Been vacant for years, I reckon,” the chief of police told me. “Least, never seen anyone in it.” 

“You ever been up there?”

“Nope.” He glared at me. “Sign at the front says to keep out.”

❧

The old clapboard two-story house sat back on the big lot at the end of Harmony Lane, in a cul-de-sac. The places on each side were vacant, a for-sale sign in one yard. The house didn’t seem to be in disrepair, and the land it rested on was almost solid ground cover. No weeds. One large oak stood on the left side. Nothing more. A tall wrought-iron fence appeared to surround the property, and a double gate crossed the concrete driveway. I stood on the sidewalk, studying it. I guess I could imagine something evil or threatening or scary there, but in fact no one had used those words.

“Curious about the old place?” a voice behind me asked. I turned and saw an elderly man wearing a black shirt and clerical collar. 

“Waiting for the dragon to come out,” I laughed.

“You may be here awhile,” the cleric said. He smiled and introduced himself as Father Timothy, from Christ the King Church just off the town square.

“Haven’t seen you before. You visiting?” 

“John Fremont,” I said as I took his hand. “I freelance for a few of the state’s weekly papers and heard some rumors about the town dragon.” I looked back at the house. “Haven’t spotted it yet. Haven’t spoken to anyone who has.” I tried not to sound judgmental.

He stood beside me, following my gaze at the old house. “Maybe we should have a chat,” he finally said. The note of gravity in his voice was interesting, and we walked to the rectory, just a block away. The front room of the small house was quite welcoming. I accepted his offer of coffee and examined the room as he left to fetch it. A traditional sofa and love seat faced each other across an old walnut coffee table. An armchair was at one end. It was the kind of room where a priest might counsel parishioners. Warm and safe.

“What kind of story are you planning to write?” Father Timothy sounded tentative as he brought the coffee. He looked at me as he lifted his cup, sizing me up. 

“Don’t know yet,” I answered. I took a sip. “Maybe none at all.” It might be good to reassure him. “I haven’t heard much to even confirm that there is a dragon.” I looked closely for either affirmation or dismissal. His expression was calm but reserved. Since he had initiated this, I kept quiet. Still holding his cup, he said, “You’re not likely to get much.”

“Have you seen it, Father?”

He studied me a moment, put his cup down, then said, “In my line of work, John, you don’t need to see a miracle performed to accept it.” 

The odd intersection of dragons and miracles was unsettling. “What strikes me, Father, is that no one I’ve spoken to denies there is a dragon, and yet no one seems apprehensive about it.” We sat quietly, each taking a sip of coffee. “It’s as if people take the dragon’s presence for granted.” I looked at him directly. “As an act of faith.”

The priest nodded slowly. “Yes,” he said. 

“But why?” I asked. “And why not talk about it?”

“Are you a man of faith, John?”

The old priest seemed to love non sequiturs. “I was an altar boy when I was twelve,” I said. “Haven’t been to church in a while.”

His gray eyes sparkled. “Faith, you may know, goes beyond the church.” He leaned forward. “Church is often where it’s secured.” He relaxed in his chair, his creased face softening. “There are congregations of different religious faiths here, John, but all are single-minded in a collective devotion to the past.” He paused, choosing his words. Finally, he said, “That devotion is protected by a faith that’s both sacred and secular.” 

“Protected?” I asked. “Why does a sentiment need protecting?” 

He folded his hands and leaned forward. “Because, John, the past is endangered. Every time a house goes on the market. Every time a storefront becomes vacant.” There arose a sense of urgency in his voice. “The world beyond Winton has many a shiny object and many people, especially the young, fancy shiny objects.” He leaned back, holding out his hands in a beseeching gesture. “Even while they value the spiritual security of home, the temptation to explore is always strong,” he said, refolding his hands, “until something—perhaps an insistent memory—invites them back.”

“But…a dragon?”

He only smiled. This was all he seemed inclined to say. We finished our coffees.

❧

I thought about this as I wandered back into the village. People here are mostly farmers, shopkeepers, tradesmen. Pretty isolated. Maybe wanting to keep it that way. How deep does it go, I wondered, this devotion? I caught the police chief leaving the coffee shop and asked him, “Are there historical records in the town hall?” 

“What kind of records?” He was a bit impatient, but not hostile.

“Like property records,” I said. “Like deed records for that old house where the dragon lives.”

“Well,” he hesitated, “for that, you need to go to the parish office at Christ the King. They own that property.”

I was dumbstruck. What was the church’s interest in such a place? And why hadn’t Father Timothy mentioned it? I crossed to the small church, an unimposing stone building with a small belltower. In the vestibule, hymnals were stacked on shelves and a bulletin board displayed personal announcements. A dozen pews were set on each side of the aisle, which ended in a communion rail separating a small platform and altar. There was a simple altar screen behind it holding a wooden crucifix. The church was empty. The sacristy office to the left of the altar was closed. The smoky scent of incense, slightly pungent, lingered in the air, mixed with the faint smell of oak. I walked back to the entrance.

As I approached the vestibule, my attention was drawn to the small lunette above it. The painting on the semicircular panel was faded, but it was clearly the figure of a dragon, covered in blue-gray scales. Its tail was wrapped around it and its long neck was raised in a graceful curve. The mouth bore sharp teeth. Its reptilian eyes were intense. 

I remembered European cathedrals I’d visited over the years, where images of St. George slaying the dragon are common. Dragons and the Church were never strangers to one another, were they? But those dragons embodied evil, and the labor of St. George declared the triumph of good. This dragon occupied a place of benevolence—looking over the faithful as they entered and left the house of God, sort of protecting them from evil that lurked out there somewhere; preserving the common good that dwelled within.

Maybe the priest was right. In this small settlement, both the sacred and profane had a common mission. It was late afternoon as I walked back to Harmony Lane and stood, again, looking up at the vacant house. I recalled Father Timothy’s words: the past is endangered. Does the very idea of a dragon help to preserve it? Does the church’s deed help protect this devotion, as it preserves its dragon? That’s such a tightly wound illusion, I thought; a really decent communal myth. I suspected that a news story would likely misrepresent that notion if I ever actually wrote it. 

As I turned to go, I had a disarming flash of something climbing the large oak next to the old place. I looked closely, coaxing my imagination to pause. Did a tail curl as it dissolved into the heavy foliage? Maybe so—yet the fuzzy-edged parts were beginning to run together like iridescence on an oily surface: the foliage hiding the dragon, the dragon curling its tail, Billy Hogan’s memory and Edna McCreary’s story and all of the discreet whispers wrapping the town in a comfortable cloak of identity and anonymity.

As I drove off, I was pretty certain I wouldn’t be coming back. I also knew I wouldn’t be writing that story, either.

Ron Wetherington is a retired professor of anthropology living in Dallas, Texas. He has published a novel, Kiva (Sunstone Press), and numerous short fiction pieces in this second career. He also enjoys writing creative non-fiction. Read some of his pubs at https://www.rwetheri.com/

Rainbow

the rainbow
splitting burns its colours
in damp sky

the rainbow splits
spraying inlaid colours
into bright sky

the rainbow carves its monstrous arc
across the river of blue
splitting sunlight

after the showers
sunbeams rush through
shortest paths in sparkling drops

enchanting eyes
and then parched desert explodes
its store of breathing flowers

are we not blessed so
with such utterly useless beauty
on display?

Clive Donovan has three poetry collections, The Taste of Glass [Cinnamon Press 2021], Wound Up With Love [Lapwing 2022] and Movement of People [Dempsey&Windle 2024] and is published in a wide variety of magazines including Acumen, Amethyst Review, Crannog, Pennine Platform, Popshot, Prole and Stand. He lives in Totnes, Devon, UK. He was a Pushcart and Forward Prize nominee for 2022’s best individual poems.

When Angels Come

Their first utterance
is always: Do not fear.
They know it’s what we’ll do
upon seeing them, 
too bright to be true. 

Even when it is good news,
too much makes us cower,
shield ourselves from the gift.

There is something in us
that trembles in the shine 
of surprising apparitions, as if 
suddenly at the verge of a cliff,
the earth a long way down.

I am reluctant to freefall 
into sightings of the miraculous, 
even beautiful ones,
conditioned as I am
to rely on solid ground, mistrusting
parachutes that may or may not open, 
may or may not exist. 

Yet I long for 
something glorious
to materialize within this
ordinary room, where sunlight 
is so often transient, thin
through the windows.

When angels come, I want
to be bold enough to look 
directly at their light, even
as I shake, to recognize 
the strange music of their voices
that I used to know
from before memory.

After a lifetime of yearning, 
am I strong enough
to bear that devastating sight?



			  

Joanne Esser is the author of the poetry collections Nothing Is Stationary, (Holy Cow! Press, 2026), All We Can Do Is Name Them, Humming At The Dinner Table, and the chapbook I Have Always Wanted Lightning. Recent work appears in Echolocation, I-70 Review, Great Lakes Review, Dunes Review, and Orca, among other journals. She earned an MFA from Hamline University and has been a teacher of young children for over forty years. She lives with her husband in Eagan, Minnesota.

A Goose

We want God’s holy spirit like a blanket wrapped
around us, padding us from any hurt,
or at least a dove that is nearly tame.
We can feel her fast-beating tiny heart in our palms
and each soft feather against our fingertip.
We set her free to fly in beauty and just then --

A wild goose lands on our arm for Christ’s sake!
Flapping and squawking and flying
around our heads. We never know
where to look or what might happen!
This gray goose of God’s holy spirit
with shining wings.

Rachel Ann Russell has recently earned a Master of Arts at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C., and has taken a number of classes at The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland. Her special place is where art turns into joy and church. She has been published, among other places, in Christian Century, the Maryland Literary Review, Time of Singing, Christian Courier, and Heart of Flesh Literary Journal.

  Swallowtail in Flight

The butterfly flits down the driveway ahead of me.
I am lost in thought,
and don’t pay attention to her.
Then I see her the next day and the day after that.
She is a swallowtail, black with sheens 
of iridescent blue and touches of  rust.
She is beautiful and I finally stop to admire her.

“Hi Mom” I blurt out,
realizing the ridiculousness of what I am saying.
My mother said she’d never come back,
but if she did, she jokingly said it would be as a bird.
A butterfly isn’t so much of stretch then, is it?
Especially one that hangs around me 
every day on my walks.

I slow down to watch her.
She stops when I stop,
sitting where the grass and gravel meet,
her wings slowly moving back and forth.

Finally, I move and she takes flight
She flies a full 360 around me,
her colorful wings a flurry of motion.

Then she floats away.
“Come back” I say,
And she does, the next day 
And the day after that.

Linda Polk Haslanger recently started writing after a forty-year break. Her work has been published in The Albion Review and has been accepted for future publication in Main Street Rag’s “North Coast Voices” Anthology, as well as Purple Aardvark’s Inaugural Anthology. Her poetry was also selected to appear in the 2025 Detroit Lakes Poetry Walk, and she was a semi-finalist for the 2025 Lefty Blondie Press First Chapbook contest. Recently retired, she likes to volunteer and walk in nature.

Prayer for Faith

Though I have lost my faith, 
I still want to write about how 

the sun rises over fields of corn 
day after day, faithful, as it sets 

in the west. 
That reddish orange  

glow leaving a seam of light 
on the horizon- 

I pray that faith will find me
in its own sober way. 

Call me back to understanding 
what I do not understand 

about myself. 
That I am not lost.

Let my poem, like the sun’s shadow,
be a prayer, holy in everything.

Mary Howlett lives in Waterford. Her poems are published in Southword, The Honest Ulsterman, Waxed Lemon, Drawn to the Light Press, Poem Alone, Steel Jackdaw, Swerve Magazine, Poetry Bus 12, The Get Real, Frogmore Papers and elsewhere. She is Highly Commended in Cathal Buí and 12th Bangor Poetry competitions.

Mirror Images

Above my desk, I see the Theotokos, 
Mary’s face at an angle, the infant 
resting his cheek against hers. The icon’s 
proportions portray Mary’s face 
large as the sun’s; the infant’s, 
next to hers, like a moon. 
Together, they suggest an altitude 
above earth but not yet in the heavens.
Looking down, my hands are still,
palms up.

Hands, like mirror images, represent 
two beings joined together at the hip.
If my hands have any power to move 
or write, my hands owe their strength 
to these oblique angles of sinew and bone, 
the joining together 
of different reference points, 
like the artist’s converging lines pointing 
to a horizon that is always 
just beyond the curve of the earth—
Like sun’s gold when it touches the horizon,
Jesus’ breath, so close 
Mary feels it on her cheek.

Tammy Iralu lives in New Mexico with her husband and daughter. She enjoys backpacking, hiking, and breaking bread with family and friends. She has published or forthcoming in the anthology Sanctuary, Mukoli: The Magazine for Peace, Cowley Magazine, The Other Side, and elsewhere. She participated in the San Juan National Forest Artist-in-Residence Program: Aspen Guard Station in Mancos, Colorado. Read her work at https://substack.com/@tammyiralu.

Rorate Caeli

The vowels of my body 
reverberate round and visceral, 
ruminate on velleities, Rorate Caeli, 
on the revolutions of Venus, 
of valves and vaults, of rubies, 
of Revelations, ruminate on the vortex of veins
that run and return, the veins that heard 
language rendered through viscera, 
felt rhythm, vermillion and swathed,
sacreligious, sibilant, sonorous
language that passed through skin
retrograde and radiant,
the swooning and surging word
was sanguine, it held me, 
until the heavens dropped down,
               a trillion eyes fluttering silver-washed, 
the light appeared,
the rain opened the earth.		

Abigail Robejsek is a writer from Cleveland, Ohio.

Calfaria

I push against the doorspring’s stern restraint;
it gives; 
I almost tumble sideways in. 

Calfaria. 
The polished walnut pews’ and pulpit’s smell 
competes 
with musty air which hasn’t changed for days.

Crane-fly mote beams congregate in spotlit streams
from windows treble high, made active 
by the air my entrance brought.

The high and stark diagonals 
from right to left
reveal the nature of the space. 

It’s silent but it’s full.

Below the pulpit 
to our right the marble plaque,
not ‘Lest We Forget’  but ‘er cof am’:

er (so that) cof (we should remember) am
and then three fallen names, 
with years filled in.

A dignity of pallid marble 
faced in black.
Er, the subjunctive, like ut, for when there’s doubt.

I breathe conviction.
That the wasted dead were present as we are.

The one thing sacred is a life.

J. P. Lancaster was brought up in Barry, a coastal town in the Vale of Glamorgan, south Wales. He was educated at St John’s College, Oxford, and Leicester University. He has then studied and taught in Canada, Wales and Scotland.

This Once Was Pangea

Creator of time and space,
teach me the patience of a planet
steady in orbit, the silent
wisdom of a stone, the resilience
of mountains eroding into
the earth, the persistence of
glacial growth, the imperceivable
shifting of tectonic plates, the
movement of the motionless — 
like a slumbering
bear in hibernation, a cocooned
caterpillar in chrysalis, teach me
the transforming power
of stillness.

Ariel Tovlev (he/they) is a queer and trans poet whose writing focuses on identity, spirituality, and finding beauty in the ordinary. He received his BFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia and his MFA from Chapman University. He has been published in Wayfarers Magazine, ONE ART, and Pensive Journal, among others. In addition to being a writer, he is among the first out transgender individuals to be ordained as a rabbi. They have created original liturgy which speaks to the trans experience. He lives in DC with his spouse, their four cats, and a multitude of houseplants.