At Mass this morning:
"So out of the ground the Lord God
formed every beast of the field
and every bird of the air..."
And each year,
spring and summer,
Mallards make home
in the old cow pond here.
The female, mottled brown,
the better to conceal herself and nest,
The male, with green head
and white neck ring,
like a 1930's cleric,
boasts an iridescent purple-blue with white edging.
But not one Mallard this year,
nor last.
The bird book says they are
the most abundant duck in the whole world?
Really?
Where are my duck pair?
Could the environmental crisis have caught up
with you so badly, so quickly?
Or were you shot out of the sky
by some testosterone-d target practice-r
with a dog named Champ?
Or on your way to the better weather West Indies
did you find your marshes drained
for yet another blacktopped shopping mall,
a strip of nail salons and
faux Mexican-taco-whatever?
Did you eat lead-laced fish
or land in oil infused water,
drown under plastic or were
your eggs smashed by vandals?
Did you mistake the super eight-lane interstate
for the primordial river that once escorted
your ancestors to ancient ponds and lakes,
your green-buff eggs veiled there
wondrously in marsh grass?
Or did you lose your family
to the sixteen wheeler,
who didn't even stop,
returning to your soft grass and down nest
the watery side of the road?
Come back Mallard pair -
God's best collaborative idea
of attraction and distraction,
of soft notes and loud quakes,
of hiddenness and metallic feather-display.
