I
The quartz-pebbled path blinds.
Cicada song in waves
rises shimmering hot.
Joshua limb is down.
In the sparse shade beneath,
tiny eyes watch, placid.
II
Lift the Joshua trunk.
It is light as balsa.
Termitary crumbles;
dust frass wafts, aimless.
Suddenly sunlit, they
make for the shade, panting.
III
They breed in the late spring.
They bear their offspring live,
One to three in each brood,
August through October.
Though they’re called “night lizards”
They’re active in daylight.
IV
Janós Xantús exults.
Baird funds more collecting!
He must leave the desert,
Meet the Fort Tejon stage.
His glad boots break blackbrush.
Tiny eyes pale in fear.
V
What is this small dead bird
impaled on yucca leaf?
Shrike-struck, wizened, sun-dried,
left there for months, it falls.
Pale fly alights, too close:
Night lizard is hungry.
VI
Mojave night is cold, now,
Pleiades rise at dusk,
And the hard-gained morning
is stingy with its warmth.
Hand-sized rock faces east;
Luxuriate on it.
That’s the most beautiful poem I’ve ever read about an autarchoglossan lizard.
If I may exercise the biopedant’s prerogative, however, there is a problem with line 6 of stanza 1:
No blinking.
No eyelids.
Fuck. I knew that, too.
Ah well. Writing is never done.
There you go.
I really do like the poem, btw. Also night lizards. Did you know that their metabolic rates are about half that of similar-sized iguanid lizards? Survivors for sure.