The Duck

The farmer is constructing his seedling bed,

and preparing for the Muscovy.

He's breaking in new jeans.

He's off to finish the coop. 

It's March, and the fire's a bit consuming,

not needing a burn in the day.

I read Risa's post on wasting time.

I'm listening to Across the Mountain,

drinking black coffee, 

losing time reading lemondrop's "10 Things

I Can't live Without."

 (Well, the good foundation item

might simply be kept. I am woman.) 

I'm still taking stock of the what-not

and wheedling out.

It's an ever process, but

I've kept to this picture in my compartmentalized

head of a life made more simple

by a continuous shedding and shredding

of things in a box.

The box is my four-square,

my cabin, my loft,

my hut.

I am forever, taking note,

and sharing stock

distributing chunks of

American Express

Overstock

and Best Buy.

Today goes yet another load

on the truck my farmer painted

cameo green.

I am amused by cameo green. 

The media has to include on the mega iPod

or it is donated to the library

in the mountains, or

to the artist who grieves

beyond the drive. 

But, of course, the beloved stay,

the rare hold of hand,

The Pink Hotel book of

my childhood. 

And in the quarters of business, 

with few exceptions, 

it has to scan,

or it fills the farmer's compost. 

He wants to feed the chickens,

he wants to fold the soil. 

It has to be used,

or it goes to the give-away.

It has to be useful.

That is the rule for mainstay.

Gone the Clinique,

the high-dollar restoration.

I've stocked the barter

with grandma's advice for body-salt

and Aunt Fran's sugar scrub.

One cold cream, brand outdated,

but probably better still,

is in the remaining keep.

Smooth skin.

Full lips. 

One vial of lemon, one

apothecary of olive. 

Style?  What of it.

I'm  blue ticking, flecked cotton,

colors of the earth. 

Tradition.  Ah heck.

The life is how I live it.

I've always been a 

who'd-a-thunk it

polly-frump.

Mama's dark-eyed

suzy, tumbleweed. 

The easel now in the sun.

The stretching mat, more prominent.

The small keyboard, ready. 

The reeds for baskets

by the stool. 

The kitchen, simplified.  Herbs hanging.

Storage is but a walk by the farmer's dwarf kale.  

The turkey's pan waits in a box 'til November. 

My sculpture?

A treadmill standing

guard to assess the rolling stream

for those rainy days when

I can't puddle-duck the creek. 

The computer, smaller now,

supercharged.

I need no formal setting.

China, pfffft.

I keep a favorite feel in the hand, a

heavy drinking glass, a delicate flute,

a potter's ochre cup, a grandmother's gentle dish. 

I'd rather wake to live.  

I like coming home. 

My lashes lift. 

I've always accepted this mismatch self of me. 

  As a March Sunday closes,

Dazy stands in clover,

 Birds will come again.

 The laundry hangs in the breeze,

seedlings are in process 

 desk waits to be cleaned, taxes to be filed

 The beach awaits children.

 The deck awaits use.

Spring rounds the bend.

Scupper © 3/2010