Memory in Water 2
Shelley Armitage
August 5, 2022
It’s what he has: black bottomed plastic,
algaed corners, slow evaporation of
what is already wastewater.
Thrawn tumbleweeds accumulate, gnats swarm,
but really there’s nothing to eat.
Workers from the domestic water association
manage the treatment plant. With their
conjunto music, and wind trimmed talk
they float above him, then grind out
the connecting road in ATV rattles.
Nonplussed, he strokes the water.
It’s been nine weeks now and no flight.
On morning walks, I peer through the chain
linked fence that jails the ponds. DANGER
Chemicals at this Site. A hefty chain and lock
discourage trespassers. What to do but watch
and wait. When I phone, the company operator
assures they sometimes take him food.
He suns (there’s no shade), paddles, makes
his way in circles, his flock already gone for the
summer. Might he be like your hawks, Robinson,
hurt and grounded but without the pride that
earned a leaden end.
A Ring-Necked duck, un-
assuming in his indigo necklace, his body a
muddied flash of white against the slime,
and that other white—a tiny bright wrap around
his dark beak. His breeds’ distinction? The instant
take-off, no labored flapping, no scattering on the
wet runway. That’s how strong his wings should be.
This morning he sits along the pitched wall of the pond
at water’s edge. For some reason he can’t fly
and he can’t walk out.
Perhaps it’s the reflection of sky in the water
that makes him think he’s still flying.
Yesterday I glimpsed a female beside him.
Side by side, they fluffed their feathers.
I watched to see if she would follow him in his
methodical foray. She didn’t. She flew away.
He was left again with occasion visitors—but not
to him, to the water: quail, thrasher, killdeer.
What I know about ducks comes from a feed store,
Easter time, we kids begged for one of the ducklings.
We filled our plastic kids’ pool, put out some grain,
while waiting for next day’s Resurrection.
That morning our duckling lay lifeless, an upside-down
yellow in the blue pool, some miraculous balance
tipping his feet to the sky. Crying brought no wisdom,
no realization except that of the first raw feeling of being alone.
We’re companioned are we not, you and I,
by my daily visits. My aloneness meets yours;
yet I am less alone when you are here
and you are less free.
Shelley Armitage is professor emerita at the University of Texas at El Paso. She often writes about place and takes inspiration from everyday encounters and how they challenge an awareness that can make its way into poetry.
