Chicagoetry: Flight Of The Iguana

Flight of the Iguana

"They stalk more silently,/And crouch on the limbs of trees,/And their descent/Upon the bright backs of their prey/May take years/In a sovereign floating of joy." - James Dickey, "The Heaven of Animals"

I didn't know iguanas
Lived in trees and I didn't know
They fall when they freeze.

I did not know iguanas
Lived in climates which froze
Nor where they'd doze.

Why would trees
In Florida freeze?
Why would January thunder

Rend the grey Chicago air?
What sort of starry hell is this?!
I've never seen a prickly pear

Or never realized
What I was seeing was in fact
A prickly pear. I would recognize

A grizzly bear;

I would so know
An iguana, especially
If it fell on my head from above.

Lord, I would lose my shit

But I'd recognize the thing.
I didn't know coyotes
Lived in cities. Peregrine

Falcons, too. Now I know.
Now my imagination conjures
A coyote chasing a grizzly bear

Being strafed by a falcon
That snatched an iguana
Who just ate a prickly pear

As a group of constellations

Animating the dead sky.
That's how my mind works
When it works.

Of a hundred starry hills
In hell there are ninety-nine with
Prickly pear trees full of dozing

Iguanas

(Btw the swirling
Black tornadic clouds
Which worry the moon

Are bats rather
Than starlings).
The hot coyotes and

Seething falcons somehow

Seem to thrive.
The grizzly bears coast,
The iguanas slowly roast

And the prickly pears burst
Like little dying stars.

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J.J. Tindall is the Beachwood's poet-in-residence. He welcomes your comments. Chicagoetry is an exclusive Beachwood collection-in-progress.

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