Timothy Steele
November 2006

Sepulveda Basin Mallards

They paddle through expanding
And overlapping wakes.
One glides in, cleared for landing,
And, with his breast for brakes,
Skids to a cushy halt,
Then makes a smooth turn shoreward.
Another, in the mood
To try a somersault
Or dabble for some food,
Pitches abruptly forward,

Tail straight up from the water.
Others appear to be
Content merely to potter
About in buoyancy.
Still others extract oil
From their rump glands to preen.
(Bills digging here and there,
Their lithe necks coil, uncoil,
As they check out, repair
And keep their feathers clean.)

Just a mile off, two freeways
Cross like a scissors’ shears;
The flyways and the seaways
Have narrowed with the years.
Still, in this watershed’s
Low marshes, the ducks range
With cormorants and coots,
With grebes and buffleheads,
At home in old pursuits
And salutary change.

There, willow-overhung,
A mother leads the newer
Flotilla of her young,
Who, swivel-bonded to her
Mood (and direction) swings,
Veer neatly left and right.
On water-spanking feet,
A scaup sprints and flaps wings
And wills itself to meet
The requisites for flight.

Who wouldn’t, though the day
Decline, be slow to leave
This place where egrets may
Remain on the qui vive,
Wading deliberately
Through chilly water plants?
Marsh wrens swoop after midges,
And the sharp eye can see
How fallen reeds are bridges
For hurrying-homeward ants

That cross a rivulet
Emptying in the pond.
Soon, darkness; but as yet
Birds call and, called, respond.
And mallards drift serenely
On the fresh inland tide—
Speculum feathers flashing,
Males lifting their heads greenly,
Some, as they’re swimming, splashing
Their bills from side to side.

From Toward the Winter Solstice, (Swallow Press/Ohio University Press, 2006).