Across the pond the whistling ducks reside
where golf balls used to fly above the green.
Now native shrubs and insects hum beside
the former holes: a wetland nature scene.
Black-bellied whistling ducks fly
to the island. Snowy egrets,
Muscovy ducks, and great blue
herons hunt near the shore.
Without the tended turf and barren sand,
more families take sunset walks along
the paths beside the native grasses, where
across the pond, the whistling ducks reside.
—
Elizabeth Shack lives in central Illinois with her spouse, cat, and an expanding collection of art supplies and gardening tools. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in Contemporary Haibun Online, Writers Resist, Daily Science Fiction, The MacGuffin, and other venues. She attended the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop in 2022 and 2023.
