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Some lizards can walk across water,
feet too fast to sink, leaving footprint ripples.
We’d listen to them skim across the stream
in the banana grove, too quick to see.
We never caught one in all our traps.
One day Kiondo showed a small flower sack.
His hands emerged cupped over some secret
his face could not contain: Waterwalker.
We found a small sheet of tin from the shop,
and erected cardboard walls to hold our mystery.
Sun-glare made it tough to see our captive
begin dancing. One foot up, a little shake,
then the next. Then it was two, alternating,
diagonally. We laughed, prodded it on.
Its tail shifted, touched hotter metal
and we hardly saw it jump, just heard
the cardboard thud and it landing again,
feet too burned to grip. Kiondo realized first
when he singed his fingers on the tin.
He scooped it with the flour sack
and said he wanted to see it walk on water.
On the bank in the banana grove, we freed it
and sat in the shadows. It sat there, staring.
Then something triggered it, a touch
of wind perhaps, and it darted into the water,
its feet too burned. It sank and rode like a leaf
until in one patch of sunlight a hawk swept by.
There was no sound, then a clatter of wings.
No shadow. A flash of brown, the talons,
a splash. The stream smoothed over.
Kiondo looked bitter, Jeremiah awestruck.
We knew the feel of fault.
And the manner of cycles, how one
feeds the other, becomes, tail to tongue,
the ways in which those most awesome
are taken, during or long before their time.
Michael Johnson is a native of Bella Coola, British Columbia. He received a BA in creative writing from Lewis-Clark State College. His poems have appeared in various publications, including Malahat Review, Talking River Review, and Clackamas Literary Review. His poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and he was a finalist for the 2003 Ruth Lilly Fellowships from Poetry Magazine.
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