This morning,
on my way to the back door,
I saw a gecko
clinging beside the frame \u2013
head pointing down,
one small leg stretched behind,
its tail curved
loosely to one side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nothing unusual in that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They live among us quietly,
running across walls
and upside-down ceilings
as though gravity
were only a suggestion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I pointed it out
as we passed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Perhaps Rosie had found it
the night before,
my husband said \u2013
some small excitement
in the dark.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A few minutes later
I came back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The gecko was still there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not a flicker,
not the smallest movement,
only that impossible grip
upon the wall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I thought:
it is waiting for me to leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I touched it gently,
expecting the sudden life of it \u2013
the startled leap,
the quick scramble
out of reach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And still,
for a little while,
I could not quite believe
that it was gone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I swept it carefully
into the dustpan
and carried it outside,
leaving every chance
for some mistake \u2013
for a tiny foot to move,
a tail to twitch,
for life to suddenly remember itself
and run away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it did not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Later,
beneath a young bottlebrush,
I made a small place
in the earth
for a grey little creature
that had lived unnoticed
inside our walls,
and for one morning
made me stop
and notice it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This little poem came from finding a gecko beside the back door one morning. It was so perfectly still, and so firmly attached to the wall, that even after I realised it had died I kept half-expecting it to suddenly spring back to life and run away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poems"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hamjak.com\/ma2005\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hamjak.com\/ma2005\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hamjak.com\/ma2005\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hamjak.com\/ma2005\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hamjak.com\/ma2005\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5920"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/hamjak.com\/ma2005\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5920\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6559,"href":"https:\/\/hamjak.com\/ma2005\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5920\/revisions\/6559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hamjak.com\/ma2005\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hamjak.com\/ma2005\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hamjak.com\/ma2005\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}