Duck
For over a week it’s been happening
at intervals outside my window, a fleet
of six drakes cruising the stream
vying for morsels, barking at rivals.
When they spy her, and the mood takes them
they stream up behind the
lone grey girl, and before she can get
away, before I can yell duck, duck
they’ve got her, dunk her
in the muck of the creek, snap
at her neck, slap the orange
plastic flaps of their feet down
on her back. They peck and ruck her,
jab and rip at neck feathers.
As a pack, unchecked, they rape her.
Isn’t that the word? Is it different because they’re
birds? This is the pure hot savagery
of a gang. Then they make her their punt,
dunk her again, and when they’ve tired, slacked
or gotten distracted, she runs away
into the field, stops, smoothes the down they’ve half
stripped off her wings, then limps away on her own.
She glances back once to check who might have seen,
then a second time to watch the men,
but they’ve already forgotten her, standing
on the bank for a photograph, preening
their emerald jackets and tails
a gaggle of Oxford scholars again, rowers,
neat white collars ironed by their mothers,
band of brothers, the tiny blank eyes in the taps
of their heads swiveling indifferent
little snivelling lords of the creek.