By guest poet extraordinaire Kari McKern
It is patient as jade,
flexible as bamboo,
reflective as a still lake.
It hides its heart
in porcelain, but encodes
its memory in silicon.
It dreams in dynasties,
thinks in cycles,
speaks in signals.
It does not blink often—
but when it does,
the world shifts.
It is neither East nor West,
past nor future—
it is the long now.
This Dragon does not roar.
It whispers through fibre-optic veins
and five-thousand-year-old lungs.
And when it dreams,
it dreams as a civilisation
that has learnt to evade death.
Words by Kari McKern 2025. Image by Grok AI 2025.
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Lovely Kari! Am I right in thinking you’re alluding to China?
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He’s been lighting my dobbies while I studied him.
The poem is about the real China, more deserving of wonder and admiration than fear and the poem based on quantifiable readings.
https://osscqdlq.manus.space/?
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I enjoyed this the first time I read it and enjoy it even more at a deeper level for its imagery, its calm , it’s ode like qualities —
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Kari is so clever : )
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