They wouldn’t tell me:
the swell of the sea,
the fish, that avert my gaze
in their scurrying, schoolish way;
my muscles when I’m swimming;
my skin when I anoint it;
my eyes as they drop and drop;
nor the person at the till
in this exchange of glances and electric
currency.
That gecko would have told me
but sudden death found it before,
its whitish belly and adhesive pads
upside down.
This sharp contrivance
of four figures in permutation
when I look at the calendar in awe —
I know it must be there somehow
or another.
My parents behind a cloud of confusion,
they might be wanting to tell me
all the time.
Or people in general, they must roar it at me
when I brush past them in my hasty,
brazen pace.
There was this jackdaw,
it was going to say something —
I took a close picture of it instead,
kind of awesome.