There Be Dragons

Once, upon a time when the
Earth was flat, and the horizon
led to a dangerous tipping point
where sailing vessels ran the risk
of slipping over the edge of the
known world into a vast dark
fearful vacuum of nothingness
to be forever lost, dropping past
an eternity into the unrelenting
void, it was common knowledge
that dragons, you know, lingered
here, and there, where human
settlement was not known to
exist. Those dragons, so to speak
- and we shall - are there, still -
and are here, as well, lurking,
biding their ancient time. The
Earth, we may feel, we now have
settled, and know full well, in its
rotund geology, but its companions,
nature and time, remain mysterious
forces humankind's curiosity and
ingenuity have yet still not managed
to accurately decipher. Those
dragons, in the guise of conflict,
pestilence, natural upheavals, and
climate catastrophes remain,
untamed, threatening, forbidding;
lethally shunning futile pacification.