Ducks On Creek

Sometimes;

I have a tightness in my throat, a slight vaguely debilitating

Queasiness in my gut; 

A dry feeling like something is missing

That I want to find to be whole,

Like hunger, like thirst, like boredom or dis-ease or fear and itchy clothes,

I sort of live with it.

Then:

When I take our ducks to the water, to the creek,

First out of their little prison home,

Where they have been saying “HA, HA, HA, HA, HA”

And we go wending, waddling our way, down the road, me prodding them

In the late afternoon sun, usually,

And I watch them immediately begin to play upon the bed, the creek bed

Splash, dive, splish, duck, tail wiggle, like happy dogs with bobs,

With utter abandon and no self-consciousness, busy at once, immediately,

Doing what they most certainly do best,

And I watch the water beads roll off their backs mercurially,

(and I think of all those “duck” expressions, thinking how great that

Words and reality can be so right on).

I watch them float and bob downstream between the rocks

Perfect little boatlets.

Then rapidly bill- poke the drink to garner little evasive edibles

And clean themselves all over, fluffing feathers, shaking, bill nipping and adjust,

Spreading riots of wetness all around them,

Great splashes and wing-flappings.  Busy, totally busy,

And skimming over the Galisteo with breeding force.

And all the while the creek seems to like the ducks, too,

Bubbling, free spilling, ponding; eddy and susurrus rill,

And I want to be a part of it; I prompt them with my stick, light and long,

To deeper climes and funner spots, them happy as clams about it all,

And, in that whole time as I watch, the tightness goes away,

And my own joie de vivre returns, like an answered, unspoken prayer.

And we, as the sun sets, walk home, them needing no direction, calmly, 

Cleanly.

I am thankful for the river and the ducks, for the time,

For this time, this special time when all’s right, somehow,

Things are just as they should be, everything is in its right place.

And I want others to know this feeling too

And take their ducks to their creek for a spell.

Something that pure is…. something worth saving.

                                                                                                                             -Thor Sigstedt