Skink

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.