Ducks, Newburyport

by Lucy Ellmann

there are other delights in life, there really are, like chickens pecking at the dirt, the curly-cued twistings of bark on our fallen tree, and, and, well, spring, the colors and such, the fact that nature really goes to town on flowers and birds and butterflies, pansies and daffodils, glowing orange poppies, nasturtiums, dandelions, cardinals and bluebirds and kingfishers, indigo buntings and mandarin ducks, the fact that some sunsets and sunrises have a pretty flashy color scheme too, the fact that people always put babies in pastel shades, as if bright colors are too hard on their eyes or something, and then they give them a million toys in bright, primary colors, and I don’t get it, the fact that what I liked best from our whole year in London were my two favorite colored pencils, one very pale pink, the other very pale blue, the fact that I’ve never seen any like that since, never that pale, the fact that I was amazed by the restraint of those two colors, the fact that they seemed extremely subtle and sophisticated to me, the fact that I always used them together in pictures, because I liked to see the pale blue beside the pale pink, so I guess maybe some children do like pastel shades, the fact that I don’t usually like pastel shades, nor beige, nor khaki, the fact that a cat was the mayor of some town in Alaska, Talkeetna, Kittyna, Kittyville, the fact that the cat was mayor for twenty years and died in office,