I watch a lizard scamper up the path, tail twitching as it goes
and stops and goes and goes overtop the cinder block wall

while a woodpecker knocks on the telephone pole smashing
its head into the wood and I too am frantic in a spilled-coffee

way, watching the same guy morning day and night walk past
the window where I cling to the element of time by opening

and closing the blinds and my daylily is dying a death by
smothering drowning hovering as it goes on coughing up

stems and leaves and imagining any number of things that
need treating: root rot, calcium, hard spot on right thigh, blood-

shot eyes, and I wonder if the woodpecker gets lost in its own
repetition, or if the lizards know where to go, or if the point is

the going, because what else is there when the world leans in
with its sun-baked bricks: too hot to touch.