Mama Duck (Part 1)

Mama Duck (Part 1)

---------

Eight ducks on the river,
A treed bank on the other side,
A hot summer's yellow sky,
No clouds float above:
What a little thing
To remember ...

               ---apologies to William Allingham
---------

My eyes squinted out of Dodge Park's
punishing sunlight.

"Hey, Mama," I called across the water
to my favorite Mallard from my straddle
stance over my old braked red bicycle.
"Keepin' cool, are you?"

"Quack," she said, meaning---rough
translation---"Hi, there."

She paused, briefly unruffling some
of her various-shades-of-brown feathers
with the help of her aerodynamic bill---
before giving me a studied sideways
look.

"Quack. Sorry," she added.
"Your question again? This running
water's too loud. It can be quite
bewildering."

"Keepin' yourself cool?" I laughed,
saying it louder and more carefully---
as I sweated mightily in the sweltering
early-afternoon air.

And no breeze to speak of.

"Quack-quack. Quack?" she said, perky
duckspeak for "Oh, yes. Very nice. And you?"

"This weather's too hot and muggy
for my liking," I replied morosely as I
envied her pragmatic pose in the middle
of Clinton River's gurgling main channel.

No rain for a couple of weeks had pulled
the water level down to where Mama could
now plant her wide webby, very tangerine
bare feet on the rippling stream's bed
at deepest midriver.

The streaming waters massaged
her hips, upper and lower legs, her knees,
ankles, and feet, making soft gurgly sounds
on their complicated passes by.

Her location choice was beyond brilliant.

Tall umbrellalike trees lined both
riverbanks; they arched high overhead,
blocking, with screening vari-greened
leaves and branches, the sun's hardest
yellow rays---while letting through a few
lesser ones now and then, just enough
to dapple and glint smartly off the surface
of the shallowed river, a river that had become
no deeper in some places than a simply
normal, unflooded creek would be.

(to be continued)