Ducks Sat by Michele Glazer

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend November 4, 2016   Ducks Sat   Michele Glazer

Where ducks sat we sat next   And wanted to be Dutch.   If we would walk upright and not   Glance right or left the intersections   Would not come at us   Sideways, is what we thought.   But after a time it is hard   To keep feeling you are making this the best time   To look back on.   We talked.  Some times I would walk   By a beetle thrashing   On the rocking of its domed-back and flip   It rightside. To say I'm here, and you be there.   Now the cicadas. Their long curving   Sound, and I turn   The thick line of their music into   Us. Even the ducks.   Then look back at the trip, how   Better than to be on it it is to be   Well bathed, and able to read the coins   And translate their value.            Copyright © 2016 Michele Glazer. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   "Walking in Amsterdam, I experienced the Dutch as singularly focused, and solid; people occupying space unequivocally, gracefully, even as they were moving through it. One aspect of traveling for me is feeling awash in ambivalences. I want glints of how it feels to be inside the foreign culture looking out, while at the same time I know it is ridiculous to think I will be privy, and further, I will not know even the extent to which I do not know. It's not as hard as it sounds, all this uncertainty. But, there I was, senses heightened, trying to be attentive. And then there were ducks, so the ducks went in the poem. The poem's catalyst is also the first sentence: a sturdy rhythm and a twist that got at something of that Dutchness. If there had been no ducks, perhaps there would have been no poem." —Michele Glazer   Michele Glazer is the author of On Tact, & the Made Up World (University of Iowa Press, 2010). She teaches in and directs the MFA program at Portland State University and lives in Portland, Oregon. Poetry by Glazer   On Tact, & the Made Up World (University of Iowa Press, 2010)  "No More Birds" by Ari Banias "Let Birds" by Linda Gregg "Units" by Albert Goldbarth Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038