Thursday, April 9, 2020

Our Skinks During Pandemic

I saw on Facebook this morning
something about every human
domicile
everywhere in the world having
a resident skink.

I Googled skink, just to be sure
I knew what it was,
and sure enuf, Wikipedia confirmed
my suspicion the little alligator
that creeps quietly into view wherever I am
in my apartment
once or, if I'm lucky, twice
a year
is a skink.

Memory then kicked in and reminded me
my skink has appeared only when
I am least expecting him/her to do so,
and I suddenly (a word Jonathan Franzen
forbids me to use, to which I say, Fuck Franzen)
remembered, too, that somewhere in some
hidden crevice of my myriad levels of
understanding, I am virtually always
expecting her/him (I’ve not gotten near enuf
to determine which) to appear, explaining
why he/she has remained concealed in one
of her/his myriad nooks or crannies
thus far this year.

But then (another Franzen nono) THEN a
two-pronged observation surfaced into my
primary level of understanding, to wit:
(1) the strangeness of our current universal
germ-driven residential imprisonment is
spooking our skinks into super-extended
seclusive introspection, or
(2) the little dragons are planning one
helluva collective simultaneous SUDDEN
universal surprise appearance for us when
we all are virtually oblivious to the possibility
so we may all laff or shriek or clap our hands
or stomp our feet at once,
breaking our enforced singularity for one flicker
of a moment uniting us for the very first time in
hominid history, or
(3) there is no 3.
                                                                                                                                       
                                                                                                                                                       m.d. paust

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