Baby in a Minute (poem)

Tugging and pulling they walk down
the path through the park
past the bridge near the pond
to the bench.

The diaper bag goes plop,
the mama goes plop
on the bench and the boy
gets busy.

The boy grabs gravel and bangs on the rocks.
He throws sticks, he jumps, he hops.
He’s happy outside.
She’s happy outside.

Mama watches a duck and sun on the pond.
The pond lies flat with weeds and a log—
an ordinary pond.
A duck goes poking and nosing about—
an ordinary duck.

The duck turns in the light snapping at weeds
it turns and feeds, turns and feeds, gliding
in and out of the sunlight.

The boy bangs and skids and crashes;
Mama sighs
and watches a dragonfly race hotly by.

What that duck doing, Mama?

His eyes lock on mine and I’m surprised.
He saw the duck all along
as it poked and it moved through the brush round
the log as it turned and it fed and it spun
on the pond.

Then everything stops,
and everything moves.
And the world spins
into the moment
and into our hands.
With the duck in the center and our minds
poised like stars,
this moment stretches out to the future as a memory that shines
on our past and burnishes the days
of worry and care.

And so the tug and the pull
dissolve into sunlight on a duck
on a pond
on an ordinary day.

Leska Fore
Summer ‘98