When the blue-belly lizard sees
me,
it stops, midstride,
on the top rail of the wooden
fence,
the rail weathered by so much sun
and rain
it is a soft gray, almost white,
the one I as a child would climb
over or under,
bending at the waist as I did,
the same way I bent in the shadows
of the church
as the procession of the Virgin
Mary
moved up the aisle,
my brother swinging the incense,
I in the pew all reverence,
the way I am now,
bending forward to this lizard
as if to the god of dry summer
days,
its jeweled throat pulsing,
onyx eyes deep as every unanswered
question
I have ever asked,
and as I move my hand slowly
into the tall weeds at my feet, I
whisper
I am an eagle, I am a snake,
then grasp one thin stalk of weed
and pull it from the ground.
And now I remember what I had forgotten—
the press of bare feet into
pebbled earth,
the aroma of an old man’s evening
cigar,
the taste of cinnamon and sugar on
warm bread—
and as I tie the end of the weed
into a loose loop
and move it slowly
toward the head of the lizard,
slowly as the turn of a sunflower
in morning light,
it watches the loop and does not
move,
the way the Christ child
in the nave of the church never
moved,
stared straight into the vault of
the heavens,
and I looked up,
searching for whatever it saw,
until one day I felt the soft
noose drop,
the way the lizard now lifts its
own head
as if waiting for me,
the loop of the weed slipping
forward,
caressing its iridescent neck,
then snugging tight until
suddenly—
a lizard, a weed, and some kind of
god.
This poem appears in House of Mirrors.
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