Duck Soup

A plume flies up and plummets
back to flatness. A ponderous pause
and a duckling bobs fluffily up.

Others submerge with further spurts
and splurge, as busy as bees
in the water-lillies. Their bug-like bills
sip duck-poo soup or snap at flies
like aquatic spiders with bedraggled butts.

A lardy mallard waddles by,
his green dragonhead evoking
Vikings as broadsides splash
beneath his lobstrous feet.

Weary of malarkey, of fuss and flap,
his butt fans out like a pack of cards
and onto a flagstone flops. His wing,
sporting a flattering lilac quadrilateral,
flickers and flings off an oddly fluttering
splodge of soggy leaf-litter.

Wary of injury, of malady,
but not too flustered he gingerly
stretches out his white-collared neck
for sumptuous croutons,
a bit presumptuously.

Unhinging winds fringe
maroon-fingered moon,
like a waiter with a supernatural soupspoon,
a crater of rubble like a burst bubble serving
as a soporific seat of tranquillity
for a duck quacking up a melody
of sounds pacific:

Talk about a duck
floating on a lake,
looking like a wooden decoy does.
Talk about a drake
ducking wooden ducks,
making all the ducklings he can make.