Wordwynn

My passing-by has drawn out a lace monitor lizard
Which, startled almost from beneath me,
Goes racketing across the litter of fallen leaves
Until its tense, squamate length
Scales the trunk of a spotted gum tree.

Its vertical climb is swiftly addressed
By its cater-cornered sprawl,
And its sharply-nibbed claws punctuate its path,
To leave the tell-tale signs of its passage
Etched in the wood in a careless scrawl.

I love the Latin nomenclature for nature:
Varanus varius, so-called for its creamy variegation
And the spotted gum, Corymbia maculata,
Named for the mottled bark that curls and sheds