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Horizons
"Why did you do that?" she quacks
Mother duck to human child
Who screamed upon her marching babes
Turning the neat line into a yellow explosion
But with a waddle and a call
All is tidy and reformed
And they troop within a new moment
Down the river bank in single file to the river where they want to be
"Hello!" calls the spaniel
To a newfound canine friend
And after a nuzzle and a sniff
Happiness comes in quick, unfussy thrusts
They finish with a good-bye nudge
Returning to the exciting smells to the ground
Respective human accomplices barely meet eye and brush past quickly
Two geese but just one crumb of bread
A flash of feathers, honking, snapping beaks
But the hate dies quickly, lost inside a stomach
Silence resumes as more bread is thrown
Whilst elsewhere those with bread and more besides
Burn, bruise and bludgeon
Pulling mere passers-by into their chaos
Slaying those uninterested in their death
The ducks sail up the river now
A sharp note from the mother
Pulls a curious wanderer back to his siblings
It was for his own good, forgotten now
The child watches from the land transfixed
But a red nailed hand on his shoulder
Informs him that he is homeward bound
So the walk begins as light rain starts to fall
Out of the green and onto the hard, grey street
She walks too fast for his pace of trot
Ignoring the longing smile of a passing man
She turns corner, turns back to find the child
Some yards behind, he's through the fence
Wants to inspect that field
But a hard tug of the coat soon thwarts that plan
Now dragged by sleeve across the scraping tarmac
That annoyed her
He hears it in her voice
And for his curiosity
He will be punished for hours
In through the front door
And the father is already home
Oblivious to her beauty, he moves upstairs
To take off his uniform
Thrown into room, door shut hard
The boy looks out of the clean polished window
High, high above a gull dances with the wind
Seeing all around an unending horizon
For the time being at least,
The boy can see it to
