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Field Notes: Poetry Inspired by the Garden
By David Starkey, Founding Director of Santa Barbara City College’s Creative Writing Program, and Enid Osborn, author and 2017 to 2019 City of Santa Barbara Poet Laureate
Enid Osborn, a 44-year resident of Santa Barbara and City of Santa Barbara Poet Laureate from 2017 to 2019, has long found inspiration in the natural world. Her book of poems, “When the Big Wind Comes,” reflects on her childhood in southeast New Mexico.
Within her book you’ll find “Lizard Tales,” a poem born of her lifelong kinship with lizards. To this day, her heart leaps at the sight of one. Whether sunning themselves as she gardens or spying her on hikes, lizards often linger by her, much to her delight. When asked to write a poem for this issue of Ironwood, she thought of her friendly companions and the quiet joy they bring when they find her in Santa Barbara Botanic Garden.
The Not-Blue Bluebelly Lizard
As a child of the Pecos Valley, I spent part of each day chasing blue racers and horned toads. I housed them briefly in shoebox terrariums, then my mother insisted they be freed. Lizards need sun, she said, but softened her decree by noticing their fancy habitats, each furnished with live insects, plants and a drinking hole.
As a testimony of my evolvement, I report that, here in Santa Barbara, the western fence lizard, aka “bluebelly,” does not run away when I step into the Garden but holds her place beside the trail and trains her beady eye upon my face. Or she may go unhurried before me on the path, then veer into the weeds. I call this a blessing.
Ornate as a hand-painted animalito, her pattern blends exactly with the bark of a live oak. As she ascends the trunk, she does not flash blue or bother with little pushups of dominance, but bolts straight upward in quick spurts, devouring a line of ants. I lose sight of her halfway up the tree. Likewise, she stymies a nearby crow.
With my third eye, I tell her: Live long. Keep your tail. — Enid Osbor
