Maidenhair

Taken on a trip to the Burren in 2005. I made a compilation of pictures I took, particularly of the cracks (or grykes) in the limestone paving and put it of Flickr HERE.

On one of the trips to Inis Mór, (the largest of the nearby Aran Islands), I saw my only ever Irish lizard disappear into one of those grykes. Hence this poem:


Five Lizards

1. Benidorm 1966

It could let go its tail if caught.

Fat siesta sun full
on my back, I kept still, held
myself invisible, in love
with its dry archaeological scuttle

quicker than thought.


2. Silves 2001

Those two, geckos with the magic toes ––
guardians of our rented house
in Portugal. While we watched

the terrible loops of data on CNN ––
the towers turned
into blooming smoky candles again and again ––

they returned each night and set
under the porch light
short delicate shadows.


3. Malaga 2004

When you threw another log on the fire
something half-fell, half-

scrambled, smoking on the hearth.
Must have been asleep in the woodpile. For

a handful of heartbeats it froze
as if considering –– flagstones, open door

to the Andalusian stars ––
before skittering back to its bolt-hole, the core

raftered with blue-orange flame ––
safe as ashes, as clay,

already part of the same
sky we’d be vapouring into the following day.


4. Inis Mór 2005

Saw a sand lizard’s face poke
out of a slice

of blackness in a gryke
and was vouchsafed

something of the island’s discrete
micro-climates –– time zones

seeded between the old
metamorphic floors

shifting their scales:
elaborate flying buttress

of bramble and tiny, rare
nova-flowers that burn

in there with feathery tails
of maidenhair fern.