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Feeding Ducks
Rain pocks the pewter of the lake,
already notched by ducks.
Put another way, Akhmatova
reminds me water can be black
when the bleak ice breaks
in the feverish chill of an insomniac.
Russian saints are found in the north,
but none of them, for love, come south,
unused to imperfections under the sun.
What do the saints have to say, in the end?
Nothing to me anymore, sitting here by the lake,
tossing the ducks those little oyster crackers
(the ones I forget to pour in my chowder).
You can toss crackers quick as rain drops,
surrounded by the slow-moving bees
and the beetles tasting bachelor buttons.
And you are so lovely under the stares
of the mantises praying in the sedge.
You hardly notice the bits of myself drifting off
like bright ducks settling onto bleak water. |
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