Skip to main content

The Duck's Suggestion

 For The Sunday Muse, #162:


Is diving the same as flight? Should I ask a duck?
When the moon wonders, leaving prints in the puddles,
I ask whether I follow her truly
with dry toes and feathers?

One swift peck and the sleeping duck quacks:

Follow the dark path that drains still, shallow;
pull hope's pinion and leave it beside her flight-print,
find form between swan, hawk and 
her bright, hazy darkness. 

And then leave me alone, restless beast.

I can't help it. Even you pick up lost coins.

***

This week's Muse entry is caught up in everything (or maybe casually assembled around other projects) relating to getting words out of each others' way. I visited a local author event this Saturday and was struck by how sad I was that this year I wasn't able to participate. And I realized how angry I was about the year that was. Slightly unstable rocket fuel to start wrapping up drafts and moving them toward book form (as witnessed by the mess of a poem above)--but I'm determined that next year I, too, will have an opportunity to smile awkwardly and explain that, yes, I think it's funny but humor is so individual...*shrug* and also that poetry is amazing wherever you happen to find it. :) 

Good writing, reading and adventuring,
Chrissa

Comments

  1. indybevMay 30, 2021 at 7:41 AM

    "One swift peck and the sleeping duck quacks" .... this might apply in any number of scenarios! I love it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Gillena CoxMay 30, 2021 at 7:49 AM

    Lots of images here, but the last one is think is so stark, about picking up coins, We had all been lowered to the status where we are pleading for the next sunrise, like the beggars at the street corners and yes we want this pandemic darkness to go away

    Thanks for dropping by my blog today Chrissa

    Much💚love

    ReplyDelete
  3. Carrie Van HornMay 30, 2021 at 8:25 AM

    I love the moon wonderings and the questions this holds! I am glad you went to the author fair and also sad we could not be there as a group. 😭 Was Max there? Next year we will be there!!! Rain or shine or pandemic!! 💙

    ReplyDelete
  4. HelenMay 30, 2021 at 9:21 AM

    Yes, poetry is amazing wherever we are lucky enough to find it ~~ right here qualifies.

    ReplyDelete
  5. ms_liliMay 30, 2021 at 5:04 PM

    I will be glad when things start to feel normal again also.

    ReplyDelete
  6. qbitMay 30, 2021 at 7:17 PM

    I totally love the Zen Master duck thing. I want you to write a bunch of Sleeping Duck koans. The wisdom of somnolent waterfowl. You might have an entire religion and cult to launch here. We're sitting at your feet. OK, do it! Poke the duck! It quacked!!!! What did it say poet, lead us to truth and light!!! Wonderful write. (OK, sorry about my tangent, but you inspired me).

    ReplyDelete
  7. Sherry Blue SkyMay 30, 2021 at 8:34 PM

    I love your poem, especially the stanza beginning "Follow the dark path...." Wonderful!

    ReplyDelete
  8. robkistnerMay 31, 2021 at 7:24 AM

    Fascinating perspective and unique insight into revelation. Vwey interesting write!

    ReplyDelete
  9. JimJune 1, 2021 at 8:01 PM

    You are on target, Chrissa, one cannot not truly follow without "getting wet" along with your subject.
    ..

    ReplyDelete
  10. Susie ClevengerJune 4, 2021 at 12:04 PM

    "When the moon wonders, leaving prints in the puddles" Love that line! Great poem

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Treacle Season

  Sharing with The Sunday Muse #190 ,  hosted this week by Carrie. Keaton was great in that show—the one with wings— Where he was constantly a [man]child on a ledge  dreaming an angel who became a superhero.   She was a sarcastic (fake?) angel—it was the 80s— But always good, on time, her lessons easy, Easy as it would have been for him to fall.   The metaphor so obvious...but I didn't get it. Nor the easy and obvious good. (/s)   I watch the TV movie every other December Remembering believing in easy And crushing on this character, that city...   Angels should be sweet, sarcastic figures, knowing (like nurses and social workers) we prefer Sleeping on the ledge, reckless to call for "heroes." To clear up any confusion:  there is no Michael Keaton movie we watch every holiday season. Although, if there were...I'd probably watch it.  -- Chrissa
16 comments
Read more

Turn Away

  Sharing with The Sunday Muse , for #193. Turn away, like the moon, listening... Listening to the planet that rumbles with a hundred million slaps. All the feet, all the rockets, all the  pistons in the cars on the asphalt over the chasm where the veins run deep, blue in sunlight, black at night. Running over the chasm.  Once or twice they ran to you. Once or twice they ran by. Greetings and salutations. The sky is an entertaining shade of concrete yellow as the rain promised earlier in the week makes good on its arrival. It's a disturbing bright sallow sky, the kind of sky that puts you in mind of old movies and degraded film stock and the pops and crackles incidental to the main story.  Several years ago I made a resolution to journal more and last year I came across a video that suggested I actually re-read those journals, at least those of the previous year, at the beginning of each new year. Technically, I have kept the journal resolution, making daily notes in the margins of
15 comments
Read more

Revelations

 Sharing with The Sunday Muse #169 : It takes time for the quest to settle into your calves, to work through your soles and up to your shoulders, spreading through nerve and vessel until  you can't go home because you've already left something of yourself there. You can't be in two places at once. You remember vacations but now you think your family's plans probably resembled some supervillain's monologue:  we'll do this and then take them here. It'll be fun. When do you leave the house on time? Who's time? There's a collar of dead bushes at the lawn in front of the gas station, a tiny, grassy patch of the suburbs beyond, ruins of landscaping, bright, dead. Two years ago feels like twenty, feels loud, a power wash of wind through the window; roaring down the dry sewers that funnel a/c through the lawns and backwards, carrying dreams dry and sharp. At this speed, everything cuts as it passes. Appendix 1:  Chrissa is Full of Stuff and Nonsense Let'
13 comments
Read more