January 31st: Duck Hunting After Dark

Duck Hunting After Dark

there was another time I would’ve
taken a shot at it but I 

was already dirty and though

I’d done what I could to pumice it off

the rougher stains that remained

were a scar under my skin that went

from my eye to my thigh and while

I was the only one who knew,

from time to time a touch would

quake it and the shake, the once

dormant plates, would rub and make

like old tattoos how they raise

themselves up sometimes, two decades

old as they are, my antidote I suppose

my talisman against a breathing too

to my collarbone but yes there was

that time on the beach and the tide

was coming in and a man who had

the sweetest hands and if you’ve ever

held sweet hands against your cheek,

against those old wounded places,

it’s like, imagine a dying dog hearing

the leash chain sweep along the panel

wall in the hall and her mistress

brushes it with her coat--

doesn’t that poor retriever want

to get up isn’t her heart ramming

almost new in between her

lungs and isn’t this touch and sound

and memory what she ultimately

dies of?  And aren't we glad?  The trusted good
run through the wet reeds, the duck flying into

the steel shot the falling into the pond

and sweet sweet dog off like loyalty

as though that’s the only thing

on her mind, swimming, as though

when she opens her mouth to the breast

of still warm meat she shuts off

her desire for blood and swallows

something else instead, pond water maybe,

or something cultured something

newer than primal desire.  It’s as sweet

as her leaving a retrieved mallard at her

mistress’s feet and, wet and beaming,

takes the palm on the skull like it were

a blessing like it were something to carry

out into the world in a cap around

her head, a blessing, yes, and a quick

thrust of the duck in the bag, out of the way,

out of sight, his emerald head sagging

from the weight of his fall, the crush

of his retrieval not a crush at all but

something soft as a new baby’s skin

and the dimple of teeth, oh it would

have to be like this, it would have to be

a revival like that, at the edge of a pond
duck hunting after dark.