Why is it that a duck has all the luck? Poet J. C. Foritano has the answer.

Black Duck

What but envy
moves this stroller
to contemplate a duck
who’s found his pond.

Although the tarmac smoothes
our step, we’re still some ways away
from food and harbor. Of course, for him there is

migration, reproduction, a fragile life-span.
Yes, all that, and no insurance, too; and yet,

to see this duck move at one with the whim to move,
pluck provender from under that buoyant medium

on which he moves, climb ripples that barely tip
a settled equilibrium, and all without the furnishing

of furniture or weight of clothing, moves us to wish
to conjure on those hollow bones a future

even half so blissful as those instants tuned
to such spare motion’s rocking rest.

— J. C. Foritano

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