Song and Dance

The ducks are clearly audible
On the pond, once the traffic’s gone
Back down the mountain near sunset.

The airborne news won’t reach up here,
Not yet at least. You can forget
Checking your media and texts.

You listen to the ducks, knowing
They have their own social issues,
Violence, and competition,

But they sound peaceable enough
On the pond in the evening air.
With autumn around the corner,

Maybe you think of Yeats’s swans,
Or maybe you marvel again
At how the old hermits managed

Without music except their own,
And with very little to read—
A few books, over and over.

What really happens to the mind
With that much solitude and time?
Stonehouse wrote that fantasy ceased,

But a torrent of daydreaming
And outright hallucination
Seems more probable. Or perhaps

Real solitude, away from words
And music, without visitors,
Becomes effortless with practice.

An abrupt ruckus of quacking
Comes up from the ducks, then quiets.
Imagine that for song and dance.