Ducks Poems

Everyone grumbled. The sky was grey.
We had nothing to do and nothing to say.
We were nearing the end of a dismal day,
...

Once upon a time a frog
Croaked away in Bingle Bog
Every night from dusk to dawn
He croaked awn and awn and awn
...

In the pond in the park
all things are doubled:
Long buildings hang and
wriggle gently. Chimneys
...

Waking in the night;
the lamp is low,
the oil freezing.
...

There are sketches on the walls of men and women and ducks,
and outside a large green bus swerves through traffic like
insanity sprung from a waving line; Turgenev, Turgenev,
says the radio, and Jane Austin, Jane Austin, too.
...

O you shaggy-headed banyan tree standing on the bank of the pond,
have you forgotten the little chile, like the birds that have
nested in your branches and left you?
Do you not remember how he sat at the window and wondered at
...

A walk in the park is a pleasure to do,
When a visit to one is long overdue,
To take the dogs too, is really great,
For the exercise is just first rate.
...

I knew that James Whistler was part of the Paris scene,
but I was still surprised when I found the painting
of his mother at the Musée d'Orsay
among all the colored dots and mobile brushstrokes
...

Three ducks pecked around
In a garden one warm day
They wore beautiful coats
Of white feathers to display
...

The railway rattled and roared and swung
With jolting and bumping trucks.
The sun, like a billiard red ball, hung
In the Western sky: and the tireless tongue
...

Overcast but warm,
The day dry, unusually.
Walking the woods with the dogs
As many times before.
...

I hear some one calling me from deep,
it is not the footstep heard in sound sleep,
but yes a deep call and sound familiar,
Neither shout from liar nor it from cavalier,
...

Child of my winter, born
When the new fallen soldiers froze
In Asia's steep ravines and fouled the snows,
When I was torn
...

(To E.M., Who drew them in Holzminden Prison)

I
...

To the Memory of the Household It Describes
This Poem is Dedicated by the Author:

"As the Spirits of Darkness be stronger in the dark, so Good Spirits,which be Angels of Light, are augmented not only by the Divine lightof the Sun, but also by our common Wood Fire: and as the CelestialFire drives away dark spirits, so also this our Fire of Wood doth thesame." -- Cor. Agrippa, Occult Philosophy,
...

China's Emperor, craving beauty that might shake an empire,
Was on the throne for many years, searching, never finding,
Till a little child of the Yang clan, hardly even grown,
Bred in an inner chamber, with no one knowing her,
...

When I woke, the town spoke.
Birds and clocks and cross bells
Dinned aside the coiling crowd,
...

"I do not like to go to bed,"
Sleepy little Harry said;
"Go, naughty Betty, go away,
I will not come at all, I say! "
...

Ducks bobbing on the water--
are they also, tonight,
hoping to get lucky?
...

Four ducks on a pond,
A grass-bank beyond,
A blue sky of spring,
White clouds on the wing;
...

It was a sad tale to tell but the duck was scared of the water
She would try to glide along the ripples of the river
But her wings got wet from the boggy and plant-filled water
And this meant she couldn't flap her wings into the sunny sky
...

Way back in the sad old 1940s
a small and feathered immigrant came here.
I warn you, this is one of those stories,
that make the hardest hearted shed a tear.
...

This is a story of some Merganser ducks and a photographer. There are thousands of pictures posted on line about ducks in their natural pristine environment. But, there is nothing about how the ducks feel about this. Therefore, I have decided to write this poem from the ducks point of view.


Mergansers and Photographer
...

Near the beaver lodge the ducks, two,
Wondered where the beaver was at
Here at home in Lincoln Park Zoo,
Maybe inside his habitat.
...

The Wonderful Ducks
March 16, 2021
...

this earliest dutch morn
i heard birds flying above
sorry, no birds at all
i think they must be ducks
...

One by the door,
Two in the garden;
Ducks!
Muse,
...

i.m. Fernande Zang
From this day on no sky a granny's rag a ghost
A cotton phantom you could say a faded holey cloud
Could call it crying in the great big handkerchief it makes
God can't see through it we all know he didn't never exist

There are daisies and emptiness in this scrap of cloth
One day it graced gran's shoulder when she was young
The next it's part of the time before the dreadful time
I can see brothers' heads in the bushes with thorns and bindweed
And further on I see the horse's ears sticking up
The little sister sulking somewhere in the three-leafed clover or under the big shed's growly corrugated roof
And where have I left my head

Not in the kitchen with the scratchy very green-backed sponge
The saucepan-handles like the ears of horses careful how you touch
The father christmas letter in the cookbook recipe a day
The note from father flog we finally made mincemeat of
Rags and napkins slipping like a knot
My headpiece gone as an under-the-table duck
While in this childishness you find it all by heart
So why not under the drop-leaf table while it takes its leaves

The ducks were true or false
And never an unwanted head
Even in the lav with the newspapers crickets bobbing turds
Hardly ever a severed head

And I won't lose my hand in this cloth
This drying-up nappy-it's-not
Though it'd be fine in a song
A little household song of fast-dissolving bliss
For a nappy to flap in

Tea-towel nicked from the cupboard for memory's sake and not
An oblong of fabric you use to wipe the crocks
Or a Belgian mop a sloppily written text
And if it burns there's water in the gas

A cloth like a guitar
A wonderwipe, a star
Of water-lily tiny impromptu table laid by chance
(Luck rhymes with the radiance
Of moonshine and the violin's not envious)

This may not be exactly what we mean
By poem but I was wondering why I'd whisked this cloth away
From grandma's wardrobe yesterday when she died
The pattern isn't daisies but two ducks
Two big fat ducks twelve oranges
And let them roll away the oranges and let the heavy ducks
Rise up for ever to a paradise that's lost
Among the pelicans the cranes the Père Ubus
And everything mislaid with my loose screws

We are the skyless we soak up
Let them rise to their oranges ducks the thing that counts
These days I understand a tiny nothing bit of something
I've secreted this
To find my words
I know my gran forgives me my sense of fun
With some serious stuff thrown in

She's glad for us gran to laugh at her for having put
Both of her husbands in the selfsame vault the same infinity
Grave is a tomb across the Channel differently pronounced
I've found my head again all in one piece it's in the hanky
Giant's hanky tea-towel of time past
And it's turning surely.
...

Tomorrow is game day all across Husker land Everyone is excited, the Ducks just don't understand
My bird shot is ready
The remote is in my hand
I promise to yell and go crazy
...