The Ducks

In the black marble lake

Jade fishes flit through reeds of sunbeams.

The wing of the duck, the wave of her wake

Are one with the stillness, in pure streams—

Like truth glimpsed through dream-windows.

Near glass wands, a glimmering drake

Shines forth the darkness of rainbows

Between perception’s seams.

And at dawn, when the earth-shadows shake,

The wild pipes of the ducks chime

Song-winged ships that break

Free and climb beyond time.

Written around 1988

Painting by Carl Friedrich Deiker around 1875. Public Domain. Wikimedia Commons.

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