A duck has come down the chimney
into Yvonne’s weaving studio
descending through Edwardian ash
passing through more than a century
collecting the hubris of vanished dreams
landing squat exhausted wings drawn in
it has thrummed out of place all day
tumbled from the large clay roof pot
finally knocking down the insert buffer
out of the sixth generations of old iron
into a phalanx of spools and cast aways
from where a dark eye looks for sky
as its heart beats against enclosure
marking out carpet blinds walls metal ceiling
seeking a break in the human bounds
to sit now dumbfounded and questioning
so quietly still in its bundled fear and loss
until I make the first anxious throw
an old dressing gown for net and chance
getting away to crouch under the loom
upsetting baskets of shorn dreaming
a head turned back to my tremble approach
crawling in we each lunge in hope
and I hold it close as a love redeemed
struggling as it must against wrap and chest
to where from the midnight porch
the old cloak thrown open to the night
reveals a stagger then leap to flight
it rises in a graceful arc slow flapping
turns the measure of the wetlands horizon
breaks right and out below the misty moon
back to our steep shining silver roof
as we close the door on passing traffic
alighting tired on the journeying return
to the bobbing greedy unready world
