"The duck stood on the mountiantop,
  Then, spreading wings, leapt down."

From a platform's splintered rail, looking down
to reeds bowing as Malliard ducks sail through

suddenly I am paddling on the chilly pond,
my arms are wings, my head is blue-green.

I don't understand what the other ducks are
quacking. I dunk head underwater, and find
only a question: What have you become?

The oracle at Delphi was always right, but never
as first interpreted. The meaning of her utterance
lay in the structure of the riddle, and in the no
man’s land between riddle and solution.

As I walked home for breakfast, wings
collapsed into arms, feathers into pale
skin again, and my mind bartered with
the illusion of stability, awakening and
the constant emerging into being.