Tongues

For Lewis, Summer 2010 

While our eyes are cast down to our toes
Look!
The last being I expected on Earth
A lizard, basking on my urban path.

This prehistoric shape
in panic
scramble-slides across the tarmac
flashing a blue tongue.

Little wonder
I've known your name from childhood!
And yet
abandoning formalities, I say:
Hello! Little Darling One - wait!
searching in my burden for
the means to grasp this gift
with light

(beep

click)

I never get that far.
I sacrifice a last glimpse of weird tail
in the scramble-panic fumble
for my camera

gone

there is joy and worry
that this great event
will go unproven 

I'll go with joy. 

It's wheels and pedals again
until
a thousand red tongues
halt my course

(the breeze vanishes as I stop,
stoop in the thick air
loopy girl, looking at leaves)

There is always a just-right one.

Today, a tiny, scarlet wedding ring
- dust, should I grasp too hard -
pleases me enough
to cycle on

pretending my joy
is owed to irony.