Beside Mallards

I would have said a few words, just a few

When sitting beside mallards at the pond

To touch the stream of water minnows drew

Like quicksilver to an unknown beyond

The flash of fins to some familiar place

Curtains of algae obscuring the sun.

My heart halted as they received their grace

Excluded where the stream was overrun.

I would have spoken, it was very deep

There were walls I could never penetrate

Buried inside the place where longings creep

I never could completely understand

Pressed under a great stone like Sisyphus

My soul reaching at every precipice

When a minnow freed itself from my hand

To escape preferable than to die.

I asked myself which one would be kinder

I was this girl and no one would find her

Beginning when the mallards paddled by.