F. Daniel Rzicznek

Sketch

Notice the legs, each minor crease
and cranny-like details of tree bark,
and the tawny wing feathers
caught mid-riffle, darkening,
and the snowy caps monkish
on the drakes and the sandy
heads of hens. Blood stales
on those four blue beaks: the black,
thrown-ashore buoy of each tip,
the narrow double door of the nose
and the whole soft heap they made
on the blind’s platform floor,
how walking, four hours earlier,
we had alarmed some geese
in the pre-morning, then stopped,
watched their trajectory: some stars
muted—some coming clear.

Film

What I’m asking for is the scene:
the notion of a camera itself to come
forward, across the wet driveway,
past my brother and me kneeling
before the ducks, between, in fact,
our heads, for a slow, steady, close-
up of apricot and lemon-tinged
leaves engulfed in a trough of snow,
and then zoom in on the woods,
the trunks looming tight together,
the trees in comparison young,
as this land where our parents live
was once cleared for crops. Scraps
of cloud drift above and behind
the trees, but also, at certain angles,
through them, rendering the distance
suddenly wrong and deep with wings.