Massachusetts 5, or The Final Draft

Miraculous

A tiny duck is flying higher than his feathers should let him,
swooping down to swim faster than his tiny duck feet
should carry him in a perfectly
straight line across a river that is moving
so fast there should be no way he can fight it
while his mother sits on the other side, without
even a ruffled feather to show any kind of fear
for her week-old baby duck.

But here I am, on a cliff that should leave me too high
for my bare eyes to see the tiny
duck’s head zooming across the whitecaps, with too little
sun protection to keep my white-girl knees from
frying into blisters, too willing to dismiss
the blind faith of my blurry eyes
to admit that I think
I’m seeing a miracle.

Miracles are acts of desperation
turned beautiful, like the star that shoots
through the cloud cover
for its one last chance at glory before it dies, like
Merganser ducklings learning how to swim
in the middle of a rapid,
like the sun wrestling through the morning fog
to warm the ocean.

Miracles are accidents that allow
us to survive, like the tackle box that trips
the man who falls and lets his catch go free, like
the bullet that hits a soldier bad enough
to send him home alive, like the first time
poetry slammed into my faithless soul like a car crash
that left me twisted and burning, unable to look away. And today,

I know that one mother Merganser can teach me
more about faith than any house of prayer
and here I sit with my near-blind eyes
and realize that this
is worth more than a god to pray to
because mother Merganser miracles
are the kind that give me faith.