Peter Munro: “Storm Ducks”
STORM DUCKS
Wind marches the length of the lake,
south to north. Whitecaps crown and fold,
how the dark in a body breaks.
Facing gale force, my forehead aches.
Fingering my beard with its cold,
wind fetches the length of the lake.
Mallards buck waves. Those drabs and drakes
breast the field that these gusts have trolled,
how the dark in their bodies breaks
weather and divides the opaque,
spume streaking along the out-scrolled
wind, fetched up the length of a lake.
Bluff bows of mallards, turned south, take
white to ground like mercy wracked, shoaled
darkness wrecked as its body breaks
breastwork and feather, as gales rake
dabblers paddling their small patrols.
Wind, fetching the length of the lake,
breaches darkness. A body breaks.
Peter Munro is a fisheries scientist who works in the Bering Sea, the Gulf of Alaska, the Aleutian Islands, and Seattle. Munro’s poems have been published in such journals as Poetry, Beloit Poetry Journal, Iowa Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Rattle, Fugue, Coal Hill Review, Levee, and Poetry Northwest.