Lola Ridge

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.
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