The Official Website of Poet Luisa A. Igloria ~

The Poet’s Lizard. Why Lizards? Because they were all over our home in Baguio, in the Philippines, when I was growing up. The elders told stories of how the lizard, among all creatures, understands the mysteries of the universe most because at dusk, at vesper-time, it runs or falls to the earth to kiss the ground. We saw them in the kitchen corners, under the eaves, beneath the windowsill, behind cabinets. More than once someone closed a door by mistake or too quickly lowered a skillet, and its severed tail went skittering across the floor. Thus, because it knows to give up part of itself to save the rest. The rest is a story of regeneration that I admire. Also, because once, in the middle of a winter morning, exhausted after returning from a conference trip to Hawaii and tricked by the grey light, I fell asleep at my desk in University Hall in Chicago. I fell quickly into that deep sleep of dreams, and with some surprise I saw myself from somewhere just beneath the ceiling, looking at my hunched-over form. Did I have an out of body experience? I still don’t know what to call it. But in this vivid dream, if we can call it a dream, a small box of polished wood appeared in front of me– the kind that they used to make in the Cordillera, some of them with carved birds or fish (or yes, lizards) in relief on the lid. I said to myself, how beautiful! then was tempted to look inside. I lifted the hinged lid to find a coiled animal– it did not seem like a snake–with iridescent skin, indigo and deep green. My first thought was, I should not wake it! and let the lid fall back as quietly as I could. But too late– whatever it was, it woke and slid out through the gap, brushing my forearm with electricity as it disappeared over the side of my desk. Which is when I woke, and found myself in my body again. I like to think that I had a dream such as those encouraged to dream their totem animals into revealing themselves, might have had. I like to think the lizard is my totem animal, my dream animal. Since then friends and family have given me lizard trinkets when they find them– pendants, earrings, bookmarkers, ink drawings on greeting cards. But the poet’s lizard lives somewhere else, I think in that place where poems are born.