{the ducks of russia thank you,
their bills and fanning limbs applaud.
the ducks of russia thank you
for buying this chapbook/echapbook/reading this blog/coming out to this live event/ watching this youtube video and encourage you to comment, for this
the ducks of russia are grateful.
google ‘ducks of russia’
and you will receive ‘did you mean dukes of prussia?’
but no. these are the poems of the ducks of russia
and they are glad you engaged in a marginal commercial and/or spiritual transaction
with the author,
who eats carrots and onions and other things for sustenance
for the author loves the ducks of russia.}
Blessed are the words herded, packed into pages, bound into books, corralled and crowded onto shelves
and compelled to live in the silence of library.
Blessed are the bodies, the limbs, the waists, the breasts, the shorn branches of topiary and the faces being remolded to second-guess destiny; the bonsais with dreams of becoming redwoods, the shoots growing up behind iron and gravel collars casting shadows over the pavement, the grassy weeds and lichens and moss spilling in sidewalk canals on a diet of dogshit and ashen tobacco on a platter of asphalt, the potted plants with ingrown roots, the roots of the hairs that sprouted in the wrong places, the wrong colour, the wrong time.
Blessed is the urban jungle clear-cut by gentrification, the follicle jungles that sprout where limbs meet the core.
Blessed are the cats caressed by stephen harper, the dogs who will yet have their day, the raccoons grown wide and prosperous on the refuse of civilisation.
Blessed is the cracked and grinning liberty bell, for surely it tolls for someone, and the bell that rings in the new york stock exchange wrapped in the american flag, and the socialist matador who stares at the wall street bull with crimson flag in hand who cries ¡toro! with open-outcry optimism.
Blessed are the children;
blessed be the transcendance of samantha smith,
blessed be iqbal masih, whose childhood was a debt, whose carpets were the interest, whose death proved the horror woven underfoot,
blessed be the ghost of rachael corrie stalking caterpillar's abandoned bulldozer factories to this day,
blessed be burning bodies of jeanne d’arc and kim phúc casting flickering light on injustice,
blessed be the agony of anna bachmeier and the ecstasy of anne frank,
blessed be the free mind of malala,
blessed the children’s crusades waged and fought in innocence, lost in futility.
Blessed be carl sagan, and the golden record that spins slowly telling stories of a species that spat kaleidoscopic acrylic, that bled pastel guava juice, that sweated in watercolours, that braved the firmament before finding firm footing.
Blessed be the air between us, above us, below us, before us, thick with atoms and sound, humming cosmic anthems of the lost lyrics of silence to the lost melodies of woody guthrie.
Blessed be the static arpeggios, the arias of traffic, and the rhapsody of the restless tide.
Blessed the klezmer clarinettist whose notes leave dew and tears alike under the clouds, blessed the garlic skins that look like angel wings.
Blessed are the bony, porous, rigid-limbed construction cranes, advancing the skylines to stab the gods with lighthouses of commerce, blessed the ground that sinks under the towers.
Blessed be rococo, be fin de siècle, be failing bicycles being pushed uphills, be the vehicles become metaphors become vehicles become metaphors for progress.
Blessed be it all, blessed be the ducks of russia, for no one will be spared, no one will be left unchained, no one will be left unchanged by this, no one will know match-light from an accordion sigh when all is come and all is done and it is coming.
When the bells fall silent
and the books wail in lexicographical euphoria
and children shall play
in the jungle.
