In Breathward Keep, where cedar lanterns burn,
The Council sat beneath a vaulted turn
Of stone that held an elder, waiting air—
A hush made weight of oath and prayer.
The Hierophant stood, staff fixed like a line;
The Veiled One watched, her silence fine.
A Scribe named Justice held the iron quill;
Strength kept the threshold, straight and still.
Young Aldren came, road-stained and drawn,
The Book clasped close like borrowed dawn.
He loved its hush more than a Chair;
He feared the Dark that thinned the air.
“Show us thy art,” the elders said.
He set the Book where light was spread.
He drew his circle—swore too loud
That fire would serve and not be proud.
He spoke a Name. Flame answered sweet—
A dragon coiled in furnace-heat.
It rose, a crown of living brand,
Obedient—then left his hand.
For air remembers how to lean.
A valley-breath slipped in unseen;
It tipped one instant, red and bright,
And bent his dragon out of right.
The ward unspooled; the rafters caught;
His thunder fed the blaze he wrought.
One page-edge browned. One letter charred.
The Book endured—but pride burned hard.
The elders stirred. The Veiled One spoke.
Green silence fell; the dragon broke.
The Hierophant’s calm Word laid claim;
Ash settled where had stood the flame.
The hall held breath. The village stilled.
Aldren knelt—ambition spilled.
His iron certainty ran thin;
He felt the fracture lie within.
He touched the singed and trembling page
As one who knows the cost of rage.
The Chair seemed small. The Book seemed vast.
His borrowed brightness thinned and passed.
Before applause could gild the loss,
He wrapped the Book and crossed
The outer gate, unnamed by flame—
Leaving behind both seat and name.
The hidden Art is wrought in patient Breath;
One Still Word bars the gates of Fear and Death.
This reads like a modern myth about the difference between ambition and mastery. I love the moment when the Chair becomes small and the Book becomes vast. It captures the humility that true learning requires.
Thank you, Denise. That means a great deal to me. I’m especially glad that movement came through to you—the shrinking Chair and the widening Book felt central to the poem’s understanding of humility, and of what real learning asks of us. Your reading of it as a kind of modern myth is beautifully put.