Seventh Generation

Tune and Words: Sherman Dorn

When our group reached the mountain crest, we sat to rest our weary legs.
Then I saw the rocky nest and, in it, seven dragon eggs.
It was clear they were on the verge of hatching, for you could see the cracks.
But then the first dragonlet emerged, with nothing at all upon its back.
We sent someone scrambling up every week, to see what time and growth would bring.
New land and territory the young would seek when the dragons take to wing.

For they are a proud and lonely race, solitary creatures all.
When a crisis comes, how will they face it? Will their isolation fall?

Next time that it was my round, I saw the largest start a fight.
Because they couldn't fly to their own grounds, this display gave me awful fright .
Within a month, every dragon could hunt down large rats on the slopes,
but any of the larger creatures would run when the heard the dragons lope.
Most adult dragons catch their prey diving from the open sky.
A flightless dragon has to stay where it snares just enough to die.

For they are a proud and lonely race, solitary creatures all.
When a crisis comes, how will they face it? Will their isolation fall?

The dragons were sleepless from hunger pains, whiel we watchers crawled to bed to rest.
One morning the weakest hunted in vain and returned to its rock beneath the crest.
It cried aloud when it caught a claw and launched into flight a startled yak,
which stumbled up to a half-dozen jaws, which discovered hunting in a pack.
If all the future generations kept what this one has begun.
The pain of reinventing social ties would never have to be rerun.

Though they are a proud and lonely race, solitary creatures all.
When a crisis comes, how will they face it? Will their isolation fall?

Every seventh generation, dragons are born without their wings.
I say unparalleled great beauty is what this generation brings.

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