Where’d the geckoes go,
my daughter said when she got up
& at leisure there at the white table
—a plain man & his beautiful daughter—
we played with it:
Where’d the geckoes go
Where’d the geckoes go
Then she wondered what sounds better:
Where’d the geckoes go  
or   Where did the geckoes go    so
we played with that, contrapuntal,
the green geckoes themselves asleep behind beams,
no deeper beat than their breathing in sleep,
but these beats we tossed between us are old too, 
my daughter at last choosing Where did & I accusing her 
rightly of being romantic, worrying that in that
more solid beat she’d be swept away by the first
tight-skinned earringed conga-player who came along, 
captured in the rapt melody first of his eyes
then of his drums then the machine of his hips,
a rhythm she’d never shake, an aged half-toothed waitress
in a beachside greasy spoon who came to that place long ago
& now turns her head at the sound 
of anything spoken melodic, extra syllables
be damned. So in a try to save her
from this admirable ignominy I plead
the superfluity of did—it’s not conversational, I say,
though my poetry's filled with it, calling
syncopation more subtle, less rigid,
but I can tell there’s no case to be made—
none: It’s did, Dad, it’s did.
And she walks away in her new body,
going somewhere else.