Stealing Ducks
The night farm was churning
everything over, grinding its teeth—
darkness produced in hidden looms,
spun through wriggling bobbins.
You said we should get on with it,
or expect to be caught. At the gate
we had seen a set of sleeping jaws.
It was the year’s warmest night.
The van we found contained
a hundred ducks, braced upright,
so still and quiet they surprised us—
only a low sleepless hissing
of snake-necks and whistle-bills.
Some toppled over the van’s lip.
We watched them go dumbly
into a curtain of trees.
The courtyard exploded false
dawns on the walls. A dog whined.
We slammed the van door closed,
with six ducks in a sack, struggling.
Andrew Pidoux won an Eric Gregory Award in 1999, and The Crashaw Prize in 2009. His collection, Year of the Lion, will be published by Salt later this year. He currently lives in Harlesden in west London.