Duke,
Today Lucca & Rose & I were on our morning migration across campus. After 40 minutes of hoofing it hard and sweaty, we swung the arc homeward, walking the path surrounding the little pond across from the Ag Center barns, where faithfully we greet a big gaudy Muscovy Duck, whom we have named Elvis (the late metamorphosis of Elvis actually). He is so named for he sports a very odd, but luxurious, black pompadour, is a bit wobbly on his webs, and is infested with lumps and warts of fleshy red, white and orange; these mutations (probably not mutant for a Muscovy) when viewed at the right angle of sunrise, dazzle as silver and gold jewelry. Did I mention his cape? He is the king: he perches, squirts chalky shit, pisses and grumbles high court on an aggregate bench. We love him, and sensing his age, always give him wide berth so as not to force his flight into the pond. Not a graceful sight. He’s wonderfully, beautifully, Elvis the Duck. But today he was not on stage. His bloated, peaceful corpse lay under a cypress tree half-way to the water. No molestation apparent. We do have coyotes and foxes in the vicinity. I think it was simply his last flight. The sun had risen. He saw the fire of Apollo reflected from the surface of the water and he hurled himself toward it; but died a little too soon, just like Elvis the Man.
W. H. Auden on W. B Yeats:
Silence invaded the suburbs,
The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers.
So, somewhere deep in the heartland of us all, Elvis the Duck joins Elvis the Man and becomes us. With this concoction, I somehow think we will make it to the pond. I am very aware that this is much too much meditation on a duck’s death, but the hawk in me was seeing, and the spark in the eye of a dead duck thrilled this predator’s eye. Flight was taken.
Thinking of you,
Miguelito