I saw a blue-tailed skink today.
With a start I realized he had a full-sized tail
                                                          and I wept.
It had been so long since I'd seen one.
For the nine and a half years you graced my life
     with your presence
you considered it part of your mission to pounce
     on skinks and salamanders and their kin.
The purpose, of course, was to annihilate them.
But either they were a step too quick
     or you were a beat too slow.
Whether they were lounging or hunting,
     running or climbing,
your soft golden paws with their shining white scimitars
     were just a little bit off.
And more often than not you snared their tail
     rather than their body.
The tail, as nature designed it, snapped off in your grasp,
leaving the skink to escape to grow a new one,
allowing you to strut home with your prize,
leaving it still wriggling on the porch
     to tell me of all your glories.
For almost a decade the lizards have gone short-tailed,
frustrated, no doubt, that every time they got long,
     you sheared them again.
But you are gone now
and since that horrible day when I lost you,
since that day when your bright eyes went dim,
since that day when your rumbling purr went silent,
since that day when your eloquent tail went limp...
Since that day the skinks have lived in peace.
And as I have known since that very first day
     when you put your paw on my heart
I will never forget you.
But I have wondered how long it will take
     for the sharpest pain to dull.
Longer, certainly,
             than it takes the first tears to dry.
Longer, to be sure,
             than it takes one season to turn to the next....and to the next.
And longer, I see now,
                     than it takes a blue-tailed skink to grow a new tail.
 

S. L. Shea, Ph.D.
Department of Behavioral and Social Sciences