Zan Bockes The Monitor Lizard He is not the sort you ask for time or directions. An undercurrent in the pandanus or a rustling beneath mangroves shows he is there, but he won't help if you are lost and twilight is closing up the jungle. His dark gray scales trouble the swordgrass, but he disappears— have you hallucinated? If you were too late, his proud strut would never tell. If the way to the sea were left or right, you could not follow his whisking tail. These things he knows in the depths of his slitted eyes, but he's not answering— don't even ask. All you can do is stop, hold him in your mind like a thin prayer or the last part of a dream, then go on, believing what you must.

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