The subject of the poem is a desert lizard With just a few words these lines convey great heat the sun is highest in the sky at noon great solitude the desert is thought of as a desolate place in which creatures and plants must struggle for survival and great urgency the lizard is panting and tense implying exertion or a fight or flight reaction From the poems title we know that the lizard lives in an area upon which a bomb is about to be dropped Use of the word elbows instead of legs attribute