mariposa diaries, the conclusion

I just wrote a lengthy conclusion to the diaries and promptly lost it. It's too much to rewrite it again, so I hope to tell you all the story when I see you again.

Mariposa (duck diaries) Part III

First let me preface this by saying that I was deeply invested emotionally in the survival of mariposa’s clutch of eggs, although in the end I realize I didn’t know enough to provide her with the safest environment for their survival. Three or four nights before ducklings hatched, we had a visit from a possum, who I scared away when I heard Mariposa’s calls of distress. That night, after that close call, I stay on vigil until dawn, and past dawn, once I knew that the crows had also moved on to other locales.

The night before the ducklings were born, I again heard Mariposa’s distressed calls, arriving to find a raccoon on top of the nest. I scared away this mamma raccoon and chased her two babies up a tree. Again, I stayed in vigil. They had eaten a few eggs but the rest were saved, apparently. I remember returning one egg to the nest and waited a long time before Mariposa returned to reorganize and sit on the clutch of eggs that remained. The next day, three ducklings hatched. Two were not strong enough to survive and died next to the nest. A third, who Tati named Rufio, was indeed precocious and ready to take the journey and follow mama to the water where Rufio would feed and grow. Four eggs remained unhatched. It was around seven o’clock in the evening when Tati woke me to tell me that it looked like Mariposa and Rufio were going to take their walk to the water.

When I came down, Mari was acting skitterish, quacking as if she sensed danger in the air. Rufio followed faithfully behind, at times stumbling underneath mama’s own footfalls and then gamely regaining her own footing, intent on staying close. In this way, despite her own concerned quacking and observing, Mari set off with Rufio, and Tati and our neighbors were recording the journey with camera and camcorder. We intended to follow as unobtrusively as possible behind the pair, although we were still cautious about the potential dangers of the journey. They didn’t get much farther than two apartments along the walkway when out of nowhere a hawk swooped down and swept Rufio away. I still remember hearing the scream that Tati let out—before I even realized what happened-- and seeing the little body swaying from the hawk’s powerful talons. Mari flew in pursuit but soon returned. Apparently there were two hawks, because they swooped down again, either looking for more ducklings or looking to take Mari. Again Tati let out a grief-stricken scream that I will never forget. Mari survived, but she remained in the spot where Rufio was taken, quacking non stop and appearing confused and disoriented. I saw one of the hawks in a nearby tree and tried to hit it with a rock, because I was so upset about what had happened. It was beautiful and I hated it and I scared it away with my rock throwing.

Mari continued to walk up and down the walkway, as if she were still protecting Rufio and vigilant of potential dangers. It was the most heartbreaking feeling watching Mari, it defies my imagination and my attempts to describe it—the feeling of being so suddenly bereft. Eventually she returned to her nest and the clutch of four eggs that remained.

Duck Diaries Part II

It's amazing how fragile a duck's clutch of eggs is. The laying process takes a week to ten days, the incubation process another 25 or so days, and then there's the perilous existence of the hatchlings, which, after surviving birth and the subsequent threat of predation, they have to follow their mother on the journey to her chosen wetland area where they will learn to feed and swim and survive. We've had a couple of close calls where we thought the mama duck was scared off and would not return. One time, she was gone the whole night while some racoons (a mama and her young ones) were prowling about. She returned shortly after sunrise.

Nevertheless, I'm not sure how she and her eggs will survive the constant visits of curious children and adults, as well the animals of the small forest in front of our townhouse.

It's amazing how tati and i have become so attached to this duck and her clutch. I've gotten into the habit of urinating around our house to "mark territory" because I read somewhere that it would deter predators from snooping around. Of course someone always tends to appear when I'm doing it and so I get flustered and try to explain what I'm doing. One time I was concentrating deeply on marking territory when I happened to look up and directly to my left, a relative of my neighbor is smoking a cigarette. He's Korean, and I don't know how much he understands me but he says, "yeah yeah yeah" like he does--apparently unfazed by the need to mark territory for whatever reason.

Today there was a rough storm but Mariposa (the mama) handled it with the calm and aplomb of a professional egg incubator. There were reports that hail might come through the area but fortunately that didn't happen. Life's delicate strength abides.

Haiku Elegy

For Richard Rorty
it matters not. believe this:
it matters not...NOT!

duck diaries; aka mariposa butterfly mama manuscript

A brown duck decided to lay her eggs and nest in the small strip of dirt in front of our apartment that family housing calls a garden, and which many a family--with much care and stewardship--actually makes into one. Our family doesn't. We let the weeds grow and in the fall when they turn brown, with any luck, Tati puts on her dishwashing gloves, grabs a small implement associated with gardening and hacks the weeds into mulch. In the spring and summer they grow back again--taller and more stubbornly rooted in than before.

This spring-summer term, as we were arriving home, Camila (in a pissy mood at the time) commented on how nice our neighbor's garden was, adding offhandedly that ours was less than beautiful-- or hideous or something close to that. It was late, or I would have gotten out our small, futile gardening implements and asked her to do something about it. Instead, as Tati and I were smoking outside later, I suggested we buy some toy or inflatable dinosaurs that we could put in our garden so that our weeds would seem like exotic prehistoric food instead of a family housing eyesore and a cosgrove-calixto-pena embarassment.

But just when you think your grass is not greener, along comes a little new life to make worrying about the relative color of your grass seem irrelevant. Welcome "mariposa butterfly," who has chosen our hideous little garden to hatch a family. More in the next installment of the duckie diaries.

Bad Poetry Theater

"Abstinence is not sobriety."

want the addled iteration
the simple razor action
of one more beer:
to let fake sobriety alone
to set addiction back upright

--but of course--
addiction could be drink,
could be drugs,
could be the unchecked shame
of checking msgs. again and again,
it's all the samesize stomp
to prone irish bugs

--and yet--
as long as the
addiction is the promise of time
lost
time
lost in the moment of getting lost.
And lost, stringing everything along--
the pokergameboxscores
/sexypornopictures/24/blockbusternights
deathwishes/love'slore etc...
over all those smooth saint walter mitty beads
fingers run amok,
strung up or strung out
(-hee hee--
DON’T GIVE A FUCK!)
the way polanski runs 'round with his little thieves
seizing on every balletic dodge with voracious
framing fingers

--just so--
pretend to invent your name
that point in the cosmos of "you" and "me"
(but there's no "you" in that old saw cruelty)
nothing crude
nothing bonedusty
--in fact--
the teeth may break off against
tender honest skin.

--in that case--
put the broken pieces in your pocket
and use them like new words
to curse the world with--addiction in solution, a cure.

---

pls. feel free to post poetry on this blog, but only if you can honestly, in your truest of hearts, say to yourself: "This is bad, or probably bad (i.e., I wish someone of considerable taste and influence would tell me it isn't), but in the end, at the end of the day, when all is said and done (or when any such cliches become exhausted) I don't give a fuck, I want to post it."