Oh, salamander, how your cool weight warms.
Sometimes I think if
I was hungry enough I would swallow you down.
Four times this season I have found you under this same log,
though many times I have knocked and you were not home.
I wonder how long you will tolerate me, this dry giant, this
desert god who keeps appearing unbidden to roll away your darkness and lift you
up.
But it is you who lifts me on this Midwestern summer
mid-morning, too cool, even, for mosquitoes.
The sky grayed and I
waited for someone to poke a hole in it, fancying all my happiness lay in the
blue beyond.
But then I turned to the here-and-now, to where last winter
scattered my resolve like frost-heaved rocks, and found you again,
cold-blooded,
with spots like tiny suns.
