Skink
By Rodney Jones
Gram of mania, animated pepper,
shadow-monger dressed in panic,
monitor of ghostly footfalls,
it concentrates in its essential tic
the frog leg dropped into oil
and the human shock at the verge.
If it would stop and let me look,
I might imagine the tropic
where it hangs in a hammock
between two popsicle sticks
admiring the iguana’s stealth,
but it does not stop. Hawk-
dodger, crow-pretzel, gallows’
twitch. Spider-shark. Porter
of readiness, miller of the
steady shudder, peripatetic
rectitude, run by the power
of the sunlit rock, it fortifies
Darwin and the idea of being late
and the missed appointment.
With its blue tail, it reminds us:
it will go on. It will not stop.
--------
I
had a very medical Thursday. Around lunchtime, I had an eye doctor
appointment -- I'd been putting it off, but I'm supposed to get the
retinal scan at least yearly because of various health and family
history risk factors, and my eyes have been very itchy from allergy
season and too much screen time so I wanted to make sure nothing else
was up.
Turns out my eyes are fine, but the doctor had been
running half an hour late so I took a walk while waiting and found out
that CVS had gotten the Shingrix shots back in stock. So Paul came with me just as the rain was starting and we
both got vaccinated against shingles -- though not the flu, as they had
an hours-long wait for those!
In the early evening, we had a
family Zoom call, so I got to talk to my aunt and uncle, cousins, and
sister as well as my parents. We had pizza for dinner and watched the
Bengals-Browns game in solidarity with various relatives on both sides
of the family who cared about the outcome far more than I did. We saw
many skinks in Dyke Marsh and here are some:
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