Having employed, in a plethora of rages,
the F-bomb so many times in texts
that finally I found I’d trained autocorrect
not to substitute DUCKING for what I really meant.
For no, I would never say DUCK IT
or WHAT THE DUCK??? Tonight,
having watched the heavy duty
riot-gear-encased police force
in my hometown, as curfew drew near,
and the tear gas, half an hour early–
having seen, earlier, the boarded up shops
on 4th Street–not as much was burned here
as in Minneapolis, but broken windows,
but graffiti and looting… the voice
of the voiceless, to some extent, but also
perchance the work of right-wing opportunists;
would I not violate my promise to the Multiverse
and cry out: MOTHER DUCK!

Then I think about the library cloister
at Bryn Mawr College, when I was 3, 4, 5:
come spring I would search for Mother Duck
wherever she might be nestling her fuzzy brood;
on lucky days there would be swimming lessons.
Anymore, I repost fuzziness and sweetness
on Facebook, in place of provocative and dire.

But the MOTHER DUCKING MOTHER DUCKERS
they have not charged the DUCKERS who fired
8 times at the sleeping EMT, Breonna Taylor.
MOTHER DUCKING 3rd degree murder for the jerk
who had to have known what he was doing to George Floyd;
and no charges for his cronies. DUCKING DUCK!

We are living in a DUCKED-UP time, for real!
Maybe having unleashed DUCKS today,
in the upcoming days I can watch them swim away
and write something less like just a slice of mind;
I’ll place an add in the local paper: poet wanted
to fulfill lexpomo obligation of one poem per day
throughout the month of June, and,
NO MOTHER DUCKS NEED APPLY!