Duck Pond

I had a talk with a duck the other day,
a green-headed Mallard.
He told me he missed the old pond
that used to fill the low spot where Thompson’s backyard now meets the woods.
He’s an old duck, at least sixteen.
He’s pretty sure his wife is older, but they never discuss age.
They come north in March,
expecting to find the pond where it used to be,
surrounded by trees and meadow, just large enough
for two ducks and their imminent brood.
He was born in that pond and remembers every cattail and reed,
every marsh marigold, trillium, and swaying ash.
It’s where he messed around with the other ducklings,
playing grabbo, chasing minnows.
His father and mother paddled about,
browsing the greenery but keeping a wary eye out
for owls and hawks.
He comes back up here every year,
but the pond his heart has steered by, on the long flight north,
has turned into Thompson’s back lawn, just off their deck.
Plastic pipe now drains the low-lying water around to a ditch in front,
where run-off creeps slowly down the block
toward a new pond across the big road—a spot he was never that fond of, but
has to accept, now,
as home
while he remembers his pond
–the right place–
where he had been happy and had never suspected
that one day
he would never be able to find it again.

Ann Linquist lives in the country outside Fish Creek and teaches online writing courses to more than 6000 students a year from all over the U.S., Canada, Australia, and other parts of the world.