PEKING DUCK

Ducks, Peking style,
hanging in
vacant
restaurant windows.
Necks strung out,
their golden honey-glazed,
roasted skin
without blemish.
Swaying in an unseen,
unfelt convection.
Money for their
purchase buried
beneath the
ruins.


Heels silently touching
asphalt,
concrete.
Doors open, close
silently,
hinges that once
creaked
now as though finely
tuned,
oiled silent.
Only the voice of
Spiritus Mundi
echoes in the
canyon.
Moaning.


Men I thought
the same.
Seeds
sewn millenniums ago
wreaking havoc
among us.
We now sit on
park benches
gazing toward an
azure blue
unaffected
sky.


Fearful of ceilings,
our dust and air
robbing us of life.


Bent and broken steel,
the pride of men,
riveters
welders
beam walkers
architects,
all that remains
of the great sentinels.
Other than
the golden ducks,
their fat
separated from their
skin,
swaying on a hook
made of steel.


© 2001, Jeffrey D. J. Kallenberg

Listen to more poems