From What the Welsh
and Chinese Have In Common
Fear For Lizards
- There is a rain I feel safe with,
- the kind wind uses to drape
- cedar before first frost, rain
- made by a small man very content
- with his work. He bends over
- a large wooden box. Like wind against the fence,
- his flesh folds into it. He pushes back
- his hair and he remembers the way
- he caught lizards in his youth.
- When rain fell, rain like the rain he makes now,
- the rain I feel safe with, he'd sit on that
- box behind the fence. The post before him
- concaved by his father's sledge. In his hand,
- crushed mint leaves. Then he would cup
- the post top.
- Lizards ran into his hands as if
- they were entering a new world. Mint,
- rain, and cedar post; these were
- the seeds of their civilization.
- That was before he went to making rain,
- a time when reptiles approached humans,
- before his hand tired, before lizards
- divided their tongue.
Paul_Jones@unc.edu
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