2000/mergansers

MERGANSERS

All the mergansers
seem to have died.
Domestics,
they did not last long.
Thanksgiving we found one
badly mangled.
You thought by a dog.
The wild life rescuers said,
“He’s a sitting duck,”
striking me how our words
are sometimes weakened
until they have no meaning
at all.
By morning he was dead.
I urged you to push him
into the lake,
but his body clung
to the wet sand
where he had been.
Sitting.

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