Glassy plumes fly up, collapsing
back to a flatness that mirrors
nothing. A ponderous pause
and up springs a duckling,
fluffy
but with butt bedraggled,
sipping
duck-poo soup
and snatching flies
from the bottom of the sky;
splurging
with his siblings: like golden spiderlings,
as busy as bees in the water-lilies. They emerge
from their submergings like broadsides
beside a lardy male evoking long-ships
with his draconian head
as he waddles by on lobstrous feet. Flustered,
he flaps his wings,
and peacock-blue rhombuses blink
and fling off oddly fluttering splodges
of soggy leaf-litter.
Weary of malarkey
he fans out his butt like a pack of cards
and onto a flagstone flops. Wary of malady
he gingerly stretches out his white-collared neck
for sumptuous croutons, a little presumptuously.
Unhinging winds fringe maroon-fingered moon,
like a waiter with a supernatural soup-spoon;
a crater of rubble like a burst bubble serving
as a seat of tranquillity for a duck quacking
up
a soporific 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."
