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Sport 16: Autumn 1996

A Stone Armadillo

A Stone Armadillo

for Sarah

Who would not love an ideal creature
conveyed to stone? A family ‘intermediate
between the sloths and the anteaters’
with a ‘variation of simple molars interlocking
when the mouth is shut’. Stone bands

stone flakes imitate the shields and plates
that encase them as they move by night
in a range between Texas and Patagonia.
From Texas you wrote: I can hear the armadillos
crashing through the undergrowth like myself

page 11

at summer camp. Armadillos became the
common word in letters. Any more sightings
of those adorable warriors whose persisting
became your leitmotif? They eat better
than the campers: worms, roots, fruit

and insects. By day they burrow as we
lolled beside the pool after horse trekking.
Some homesick girls cried. The armadillos
crashed night after night as if pushing aside
another Texan day. Many died in flight

caught in headlights or drowned. I lift
the stone armadillo in my arms and
almost fall into a pile of Aladdin pots.
Too dear to purchase legitimately I’d like to
steal back at night, smash glass, and grab

the dear creature for the garden. Have you round
far from Texas now to view. There’s a strange
creature just appeared, perhaps you can identify?
And on its stone ridges leaves would catch
rain stain and, like travel, evaporate again.