If you’ve ever flown into Denver’s airport at night,

you’ve no doubt seen the luminous sight

of golden drops of streetlight,

splashed across the great plains.

Population growth visualized like our own Nazca lines

A geoglyph depicting a creature of mythology.

A dragon.

Skyscrapers make up its beating heart,

Telephone lines and bus routes its arteries and veins,

Urban sprawl flaps its giant wings,

Cul-de-sacs stretch their bony fingers.

All of the creature: an amalgamation of light.

Flying into Denver’s airport one night,

Looking at that eerily luminous sight

of golden drops of streetlight,

I look into the dragon’s bright and terrifying eyes.

It looks back.

Snarls its teeth of highway junctions,

Blinks through two city park eyes,

Breathes in through stadium nostrils;

Out through a puff of factory smoke.

I realize I am no dragon.

I don’t have scales of gold but of skin,

Nothing to hide behind,

My beating heart pumps blood through my arteries and veins.

I have no wings with which to fly,

My fingers tire quickly.

I am an amalgamation of hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and carbon.

A coalition of fear and fatigue and occasionally bravery.

I am no dragon. I am better: human.