Only the sharpest eye (not his) could see
where lizard left off and patio began.
A single tiny flicker of its head
gave it away, before it scurried off
to other ancient men around the fountain,
all shaded from the damp and torrid sun.
It was all he had left. And when it ran
away, the simple glimmer in his eye
began again to fade from where it came.

And where was that exactly? Who could tell?
For all we knew, he was at twenty-five
exactly what he was at ninety-three:
a video recorder of the moment,
no more. Or so we think. Or, rather, thought.
Stored somewhere in his brain, he might have had
the images of lizards by the thousands:
some, having gotten in his double-wide,
darting across the indoor-outdoor rug;
some from his father’s farm, where they once picked
their way among the chickens and the slop.

Who knows? I barely even caught a glimpse
of his collection throughout all these years.
Perhaps it doesn’t matter now. Suppose
the last immobile lizard of his life
was his last try to open up the book
of his impenetrable thoughts. Suppose
that he had tried before, and if I’d known,
I could have peered inside—and maybe then
I’d clutch that final memory of him
less tightly than I did, or do, or will.