Wild Duck

I.

That was a great night we spied upon 

See-sawing home, 

Singing a hot sweet song to the super-stars 

Shuffling off behind the smoke-haze . . . 

Fog-horns sentimentalizing on the river . .  . 

Lights dwindling to shining slits 

In the wet asphalt. . . 

Purring lights . . . red and green and golden - whiskered . . . 

Digging daintily pointed claws in the soft mud . . . 

. . . But you did not know. . . 

As the trains made golden augers 

Boring in the darkness . . . 

How my heart kept racing out along the rails, 

As a spider runs along a thread

And hauls him in again

To some drawing point . . . 

You did not know 

How wild ducks’ wings 

Itch at dawn . . . 

How at dawn the necks of wild ducks 

Arch to the sun 

And new-mown air 

Trickles sweet in their gullets. 

II.

As water, cleared of the reflection of a bird 

That has lately flown across it, 

Yet trembles with the beating of its wings, 

So my soul . . . emptied of the known you . . . utterly . . . 

Is yet vibrant with the cadence of the song 

You might have been . . . 

‘Twas a great night. . . 

With never a waste look over a shoulder 

Curved to the crook of the wind . . . 

And a great word we threw 

For memory to play knuckles with . . . 

A word the waters of the world have washed, 

Leaving it stark and without smell . . . 

A world that rattles well in emptiness: 

       Good-by.