Today's poem is by Elizabeth Solsburg

Duck Song
       

After a fox took his favorite duck one night,
my grandfather gathered her eggs from the barn —
one he broke right into a cast iron pan,
but the others he tucked into a box
with a lightbulb to keep them warm.

He checked them every day
and when they began to shake,
he whistled to the ducklings inside.
Eventually, they whistled back,
little trills muted by calcium.

To help the hatch, he laid
his work-hard palm on the shells
with the weight of a mother duck's body,
until tiny beaks pierced their walls
to find the voice who'd sung them into being.

In the dawn dark, I reach out and press
my palm against your back,
listening with my skin for the music
that means I can let another day
break its shell open around me.

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Copyright © 2023 Elizabeth Solsburg All rights reserved
from Ponder Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission