Games of Life & Death: Poems by Ron Pickett

A FAT BLACK LIZARD 

A fat black lizard soaking up the sunrise.
The skin is iridescent, 
Sparkling in the sunshine,
Dosing, startled, it dashes to the shade,
Seeking a place to hide.
The shade will protect him.
Fast and smooth and slippery, 
Dash-stop, dash-stop the jerky lizard pace,
 Confusion for the predators.
The black stands out on the concrete sidewalk.
A grasshopper leaps into the air.
It crashes onto the pavement,
Takeoffs are easy.
The grasshopper shakes itself and moves on.
The fat black lizard ventures out.
Losing its cover.
A tan-grey concrete-coloured lizard steps into the sunshine.
Warms for a minute and disappears back into the shade. 
It’s a game, a life-and-death game. 

RACE FOR SURVIVAL

The tight green pinecones fall to the forest floor and ripen.
Soon, the seeds are expelled and drift down into the soil.
It rains, dries then rains again.
The seeds magically germinate,
Push back up through the dense soil.
Burst through the mat of pine needles,
And the race is on – the race to the sun.
Thousands of competitors entered this race.
Find a spot of sun and quickly grow into it.
Shadow on the competition, this is a fight for light, for life.
Stand above the smooth meadow.
For the sunshine,
For survival.
For life.