The Iron Duck's Tale

Iron duck in apartment pond,
I trespass my wing weight with duck airs.
I scuff by my mate--she looks awarely
shallow--a decoy play. A small fountain
reflects our mud hue and we, back,
until all look, from that ill use, patina blue.
The lights hung off the roof
blink in the windows. Once boxed ducks
bump the mote walls. I ask--
footless floats, silent--until unearthed
future gods' new ages quack,
to passersby show the accurate animalism
in our tracks.

Here, tidy on winds we sometimes sail
under the unclopped red foot bridge.
Sometimes the brick edge, sometimes
the middle waters prove their allure.
Sometimes a pine cone pops in the
summer lawn, or the aphid-eaten roses
flop; they need the Ladybird cure.
At dusk the warm air rises, the cold drops,
and we skiff amid the brown leaf rings.
Our dreams are a bevy of chicks
to corral from corners, to teach
to fish and to bathe their wings.
Some misbehave. We quack, almost hack,
to school young fowl in proper ways.

But when we wake, our brood is lacking.
Our diet is still breeze. Apartment
dwellers sneeze, we care nothing of it;
There's no nugget of stale muffin,
no bread pay to sentry a rectangular lake.
And if there were, we wouldn't take it.
After so long ignored, it'd seem fake,
a bored confession of our motionless
floating, an impossible wish
for our tails to swish and our stiff
bellies to sprout webbed feet.
Fashioned of human hands,
we would not eat.

Prefer the pond's lapping at our
hard sides, the rare rain that shakes
the tidal lanes and nearly makes
us flap. We're clean, we never crap.
There's no need for us to fear a trap,
a gun, or other damnation. Our
appearance alone is meet ration.
Nor are we mere simulation.
We're made of iron, after all.
That metal also named an Age
and Ages never end, though pages
turn and histories thicken. Here's
what I mean:

Heark back to the cave-dwellers'
ambition. The bird man who culls
the herds is a magician, perennial
best seller, regardless the millenium.
He may wear skin, top hat, or white
satin. He may brew balm, ferment
sin, or provide entertainment.
Whatever his aim, his name's
certain. So bird statuettes promise
the bird's luck: quacks, walks, swims—
it's a duck! In the Consumer Age, own.
Get an iron one for under twenty bucks.
Watch him roam

your pond's surface, languish windless
in the muck. Scrub the slime off its
breast, the dust from its crest. Though
your pond be taint with mercury,
still your iron duck's got pluck, won't
puke or perish. Though you disregard him,
still he'll mind his parish, by air's leave
test, never clog, the filter sieve.
Though his gonads are blank, his cloaca,
clotted, yet watch him reproduce:
In trucks a thousand boxed are coming,
to be dumped off at OSH, shelved;
no mere ornament's will to seduce.