I can do anything.
~Jim Morrison
This anole came visiting a few weeks ago.
I haven't seen him since, but he was such a natural model, I imagine he's halfway to New York by now.
We rarely see anoles around here.
In La Porte, where we used to live (where things were much greener) they were everywhere.
When the kids were little and we'd spot one peeking in the window, I'd tell them "Those are Santa's spies, keeping an eye on you to make sure you're being good!"
(Moms have to stay a step ahead!)
Precisely the least, the softest, lightest, a lizard's rustling, a breath, a flash, a moment - a little makes the way of the best happiness.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche
At noon in the desert a panting lizard waited for history, its elbows tense, watching the curve of a particular road as if something might happen.
~William Stafford
I am not a demon. I am a lizard, a shark, a heat-seeking
panther. I want to be Bob Denver on acid playing the
accordion.
- Nicolas Cage
| The Old Lizard | ||
| by Federico García Lorca translated by Lysander Kemp | ||
In the parched path
I have seen the good lizard
(one drop of crocodile)
meditating.
With his green frock-coat
of an abbot of the devil,
his correct bearing
and his stiff collar,
he has the sad air
of an old professor.
Those faded eyes
of a broken artist,
how they watch the afternoon
in dismay!
 Is this, my friend, your twilight constitutional? Please use your cane, you are very old, Mr. Lizard, and the children of the village may startle you. What are you seeking in the path, my near-sighted philosopher, if the wavering phantasm of the parched afternoon has broken the horizon?
 Are you seeking the blue alms of the moribund heaven? A penny of a star? Or perhaps you've been reading a volume of Lamartine, and you relish the plateresque trills of the birds?
 (You watch the setting sun, and your eyes shine, oh, dragon of the frogs, with a human radiance. Ideas, gondolas without oars, cross the shadowy waters of your burnt-out eyes.)
 Have you come looking for that lovely lady lizard, green as the wheatfields of May, as the long locks of sleeping pools, who scorned you, and then left you in your field? Oh, sweet idyll, broken among the sweet sedges! But, live! What the devil! I like you. The motto "I oppose the serpent" triumphs in that grand double chin of a Christian archbishop.
 Now the sun has dissolved in the cup of the mountains, and the flocks cloud the roadway. It is the hour to depart: leave the dry path and your meditations. You will have time to look at the stars when the worms are eating you at their leisure.  Go home to your house by the village, of the crickets! Good night, my friend Mr. Lizard!
 Now the field is empty, the mountains dim, the roadway deserted. Only, now and again, a cuckoo sings in the darkness of the poplar trees. | ||
