Salute to Buffleheads (and other black-and-white ducks of winter)
Hooded merganser
With your “bad-hair-day” crest
Messy and water-glistened
Lesser Skaup and Gold-eye,
Rowdy ones,
surfing and diving
Beautiful painted long-tail, with your haunting cry
Rising above the pounding waves
Best-loved
Cheeky little Bufflehead
Rounded body, colour-divided.
We “brave” ones watch from shore,
Wrestling with wind gusts, ice pellets
Tearing at us,
While you play in the storm,
swimming under the waves to rise and laugh,
taunting us.
A last hurrah.
We should have known winter was still here
Since you were too.
