Brown Lizards of the Pre-Alps

What should we call them, shy as visions, storm-bent,

who seem hurt creatures in cupped hands of players?

Ours, at home are green, pink-throats, quick eyes.

These are the size of cigarillos, brown of Army tents,

male and female equal, heavy-lidded, all blending in

where lichen weaves to hold ages of dried soil,

monastic rock that's robed in thick fists of wisteria.

So firmly does everything attach itself to the rough,

barely grippable bulge and slope of stone's muscle,

you get the idea there's something way down, savage,

inside that all winds its way toward, deeply magnetic,

a turn heads tune to at least swish of uphill winds.

Chuteless tiny hang-gliders who work a leaf edge,

their ancestry's a past of moral tides, debris of fate.

I admire each dicey little skitterer with rock-claws

fixed like nails. We find their Roman noses pointed up

to blue space that laps Italian lakes, as if they wait,

having been told a great love will move mountains.

Our step suffices, thundery weight rocks, sends

them bouncing back to cling where oldest dark cools

crevace and flitch; yet out come one or two always,

tail-nipped, slow, looking for the lesson of the day.

In shorts and T-shirts, tourists, we stoop and lift

the hedge of old world green: there they are, pale

ones, waiting rose-scented, in white pine beards.

Palms out we try to lure one, but have little to offer,

as they watch and go on waiting until death's crisp

breath will leave them outlined like crochet imprints

we've seen in gift shops, dried skeletons aflame

in sun the mountain's brown bulk permits once a day.

Seared saints, their oily eyes blink, near invisible

carriers full of something too big for anyone to name.

Copyright World Poetry, Incorporated Mar/Apr 2003
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved