The lizard on the stone outside my
cabin
is black and quick. It cocks its head,
beaded
eyes regarding me. It has something to
say
about the dark flecks on the hot
granite,
about its reptile hide and leathery
legs.
But this morning I am wondering
about purgatory and limbo, about the
way
the stories I was told as a child kept
shifting
like the chameleon hiding in the green
of a leaf
or on the dusty red of a brick wall.
Last night
as the sliver of a moon lifted like a quick
breath just above the silhouette of
trees,
I thought of the pines of Idyllwild,
how they’d died from the top down, the
tip
of each succulent limb brittled into burnt
red or brown as beetles fed on the
sweet flesh
beneath the bark. The taste of needles
drying into dust was on my tongue even
as I found in the world what I had lost
in the heavens, how I was taken
as its lover, wrapped in overlapping
scales,
the black lizard choosing me as its
mate.
Sometimes, it’s as if an acolyte has
sounded
the golden bells of the Eucharist,
the overtones of their ringing echoing
through all the boulders of the earth.
This poem appears in Golden Fish / Dark Pond and in Credo
Click here to order Golden Fish / Dark Pond
Credo will be available early 2018