My Ducks (Denis Wagner)
Where are my ducks?
I look out my window to discover
they’re out in the road stopping traffic,
waddling in the middle lane,
dipping into the water-filled swale in the asphalt,
mindless normads on a lark,
then the procession moves into the neighbor’s yard
eating his chrysanthemums down to nubs.
I go to their pen and bang the feeding bucket
to get them to come home. Instead
they move on to the water trough near the garden,
swim like partygoers in the Caribbean.
Wading and wiggling their tails,
then web walking like ice skaters over the adjacent grass.
God only knows their methodical evolution.
I look up to see mallards fly along the river, realizing
my white Pekings are malamutes of man’s invention
having nothing to do with normalcy.
But they do pacify me into laughing hysterically.
What odd balls,
not much different than some of my acquaintances.
Nothing like myself.
Stella's Place 
Sweet poem. 🙂
When I lived in Cal. we had ducks. I put out 3 flats of ice plant in an area where nothing much would grow. Each day it looked a little rattier. And, finally on about the fourth day, I went out and the plants were all pulled up out of the ground and the tops gone. 😯 Guess what ducks love more than anything else? ICE PLANT! So, you can have have one, but not both.
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Great poem. Great photo. A perfect softening of the harsh edges of today.
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One hen. Two ducks. Three squalking geese. Four limerick oysters.
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Let’s see if I can remember –
A big fat hen
A couple of ducks
Three brown bears
four running hares
five fickle females
six simple simons sitting on a stump
seven sicilian sailors sailing the seven seas
eight egotistical egoists egotistically echoing egotistical ectasies
Nine nimble nymphs nimbly gnawing on gnats, knuckles and knees
Ten. I’m not the fig or the fig plucker’s son, but I’ll pluck that fig till the fig plucker comes!
There are other versions. This is a drinking game.
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Mine continues (Steve Martin?), five corpulent porpoises, six pairs of Don Alverzo’s tweezers, seven thousand Macedonians in full battle array, eight brass monkeys from the ancient sacred crypts of Egypt, nine sympathetic, diabetic old men on roller skates with a profound propensity toward procrastination and sloth, ten lyrical, spherical denizens of the deep who halt, stalled, around the corner of the quo of the quay of the quivery all at the very same time.
A great memory game.
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For us, as late teens, it wasn’t a drinking game, but more of a smoking game.
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Stella, that’s funny! Bravo! I doubt I could read it after 1 beer, much less recite it.
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Mmmmmmmmmm….. Duck……
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