Three Mythological Beast Poems

Mythological Beasts

The Cockatrice
The cockatrice is yet to hatch from its egg.
It waits to wake, break the shell of its shelter.
Its cell cage cracked, left behind, it will pause,
wonder what it is, surmise that it is one alone,
having no parent or kin.
The riddle of what laid the egg it grew in
will leave its brain blank, baffled,
even nonplussed.
It will look most like a snake,
might have lizard-like legs, may even be winged,
like a dragon, flew from a myth.
Like the basilisk, it will know what to do,
why it exists, it will work on its skill to kill.
It will kill with its hiss, its croak and its cry,
its venom, its hard stare,
the ice and fire of its breath.
One thing it will bring to bird and beast,
grass, tree and herb, and that thing is death.
Long ago, it was told it would come.
It will be a sign of the end.
Though things are different now
than they were then,
it will come. No one knows when.

The Griffin

The griffin, otherwise spelt gryphon or griffon,
once waylaid a monk in a wood,
which shook the goodly monastic man
from the heel of his sandal
to the peak of his hood.
"I must look a fright
for I scare both peasant and knight.
I must look strange, but that I cannot change,
my body being like that of a lion,
my head, wings and foreleg talons
like that of an eagle.
As we both wander under similar skies,
for the way I look, I feel the need to apologise,"
said the griffin, apologetically.
"But I am proud to be illustrated and described
in many a splendid bestiary,
and to be part of mythological history,
to be sculptured in wood and stone
but I am aghast to look as I do, alone."
Think nothing of it.
Our meeting I will report to our abbot,"
said the monk, eager to get back to his abbey,
and gave the griffin a nod, then his path he trod that tree and rock made shady.

Leviathan
Huge, far more than large, leviathan
needs oceans to bathe in,
hold its weight and girth,
hard to believe such a beast exists on Earth.
Feeds on fish shoals, has more hunger than
whale or shark,
on worlds of water has made its mark.
Broods in deep ocean basins, far below
the paths of submarine and diving bell,
what tales it could tell.
Has become a myth, its root in biblical prose,
but that is not the fate it chose.
Remains alert to its own being,
knows what its eyes are seeing.
From tangled tales of harpoon hunters
and the nets of fisher folk, it swims free.
It found the chest of aquatic treasures
and hid the key.
Plunges deep, seldom surfaces,
becomes a dark island in the night,
the sky clouded, no light of moon or star,
butts waves with its brow,
disturbs the tides, creates ripples
that spread far.
Captains and crews of merchant ships and war
ships should not complain
if wrecked by leviathan,
for they trespass on his ocean kingdom.