Sunday, November 15, 2020

Poem: Fence Wizard

 

 

Fence Wizard

 

nervous dagger,

no caesar to slay,

heat will not die

and it surely is king

 

of alabaster and tan,

the only colors known,

crumbling like the foothills,

a fuzzy kind of real

thick with blurry waves.

 

caffeine for cold-blooded veins.

they simmer more fervent

than any mammal,

making love to burning stone,

chest to chest.

 

one heartbeat enough for both.

the squamous belly sleek

against coarse, mummified clay.

 

a romance so fast

it could disappear, flee to blink.

gone to some nowhere

to slip the pluck of a kestrel.

 

other times the fence wizard

sits like speckled dough,

impossible to snatch

in its oven-brave magic.

 

could it though, at long last,

choose the talons, as a sage

might glance the world

from a final height?

 

such has always been 

the beautiful strategy:

 

staccato reconnaissance

from hairline eyes

to reap the truth

from fragments.


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"Fence wizard" is a play on "western fence lizard," a common species in the chaparral. 

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