Monday, July 20, 2020

Two
blue-tailed
skinks
laze
on a rock.
Above them,
the sun shadows
a green
leaf.
A grasping
cicada,
still dusted with
soil,
toils there
flexing its skull
to open,
and falls.
The lizards slip from
the cooling rock,
drop,
as the sun
drowning,
warns
the waking
cicada.
The cicada,
alert,
suddenly
frees itself
from itself
on the dirt,
and still damp,
rises.
It will not
wander far
for love,
flying into the red sky,
while beneath it
the blue-tailed skinks
slink
back under stones,
shuddering,
as a black cat,
who'd been watching them,
slumps to
ground,
eating
someone's
else's
bones.
Above,
two
wary
herons
sway
as  a summer's
day,
green
winged,
flees
into the
night.