NaPoWriMo #24: Chilling on the Water

They know a lot them ducks,
about where it's best to retire
when the need for rest takes over.

A mallard, who works every day
on the weir-torn river in town,
dabbles on an oval lake

designed by gardeners
imitating nature's haphazard
perfection.

He mingles with the swans and geese,
scoffs at the moorhens
as they patrol the reed.

The moorhens return the gesture.

His family sit on the banks,
five fuzzy brown ducklings
and their speckled mother.

The ducklings learn to swim
in an uncertain straight line,
the first of many lessons

while their father tries to sleep
on the water, and is dive-bombed
over and over by a hooligan chaffinch.

At day's end, they sit and watch
the swans argue over who shall chase
an unsuspecting coot.

NaPoWriMo #1: The Easter Cuckoo

The peace of spring settles on a pond,

calm descends like fresh rainfall,

and so too does the gaze of a cuckoo

upon an unguarded duck's nest.

Mrs. Cuckoo, an experienced hustler,

took out a deposit on the vacant nest.

One egg would cover the cost,

and she'd be reimbursed in time.

The Tufted duck hardly noticed

her eggs now numbered three.

Even with her sun-glow eyes,

she overlooked the imposter in her brood.

Three days before Easter, the imposter hatched.

He set about his morbid task

and turned on his nest-mates,

rolling them like pebble-skinned boulders

into the waters of the pond.

And so the portly cuckoo chick stat

in front of a species-blind duck,

demanding food from his foster mother,

a prize for his brazen crimes.

But his foster siblings were in luck,

they were found by a concerned Mallard duck.

He took them into his nest,

and reversed the cuckoo's curse.

They hatched amongst the mallard's clutch.

He told the tufted ducklings the woeful truth,

and they knew where to go when they heard

an alarm-clock call from across the pond.

The ducklings set out swimming, their first of many,

across the still waters to reclaim their nest.

The cuckoo chick was feasting on pond-weed,

and failed to spot the results of his blind-spot.

The quacking and flurry of feathers did not stop

until the ducklings forced their foster brother

across the grass and into the hedgerow,

where he waited for the return of his true guardian.

And so the ducklings greeted their confused mother,

harmony restored by the edge of the pond,

while the Easter cuckoo bides her time,

waiting for another nest to be left unguarded. 

(And we're off! Seeing as it's Easter Sunday, what better way to celebrate than with a poem about eggs. Not all of the poems this month will be of this length, but now it's started I must keep up the momentum. See you all tomorrow with the next installment!)

Wildfowl

On a Wednesday, bleak and drizzly,
the pond surface hardly sizzly,
ducks dabble and watch as the world
goes by with the speed of a snail.

Not a single thing disturbs them,
yet the dawn of night rouses them
to prepare for the evening's rave,
for the evening's great pond rave,
a rave all the wildfowl crave.

They line the waters in their droves,
led by the Mute Swan Club of Stow,
with geese, grebes and moorhens galore.
A moulting mallard emerges from reeds

to begin his set intended to please
birds from Cardiff to Tennessee
who gather near the shallow shore
to hear what tunes the duck has in store,
sounds not heard on the pond before.

The mixer rises from the depths
where the sticklebacks would have slept
had it not been a Wednesday night.
Distorted honking and quacking,

with feathers ruffled and scratching,
the rave rages and rages all night
'till the return of the sunlight
and all the wildfowl take flight.

A Mink in Somerset

The old mink escaped the farm on Thursday
not knowing why he was there at all.
He wandered over grass and through hay
until he reached the river and without a glance
dived in, a black slither on azure glass.
Not one to go hungry he looked to eat,
and found none, confined with no way to pass.
The mallard did not see death till she was meat.
The daggers severed her thoughts from her heat.
Not to worry, her unused dreams would feed
another's, and fuel their endless hunger.
A once green bank becomes cloaked in seeds.
The predator once a prisoner sleeps,
hoards and fattens on bones of voles and geese.

(This sonnet was written earlier this year.)