Salamanders

It’s their scarcity that keeps me saying sacred
of the summer my brother and I would scramble
to the creek, past the tree oozing amber honey,
tossing rocks and fleeing bees, lifting leaves
and rolling rotten logs, in search of salamanders.

Deaf to the prophetic thump of hammer on lumber,
we carried them home in mason jars, I tell my son,
the ones we used for fireflies. We didn’t know
to close our eyes and kneel as my father slit
the throbbing throats, made the daily sacrifice—

severed tails twitching, dark skin marked
in caution yellow, the heads persimmon red—
and dropped the bloody bits into the cage
of baby caiman. Like leather birds, needled
beaks agape, eyes unwavering, they chirped.

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