Out of Our Farm’s Odd Family of Birds

| 217 Out of Our Farm’s Odd Family of Birds chad parmenter We had just the one duck somebody, not me, named Qui Qui, for the noise she made or the one hoped for since, near me, she stayed a violent kind of quiet into which I projected the tension of a power line or a star— except when she tapped her beak, orange as a hunter’s reflector vest, into our outdoor cats’ tin pan of food, not seeming to know her place in a chain that made her prey, and therefore fitting in, at least enough to suck up one or two hard stars of it. But she’d leave her place in the cat pack to orbit our, or her, yard, to float but by foot—not intent, not inspecting, like her chicken cousins bug-hunting in ranks by the oak trunks, not stopping to nest like them, but looking like a grounded cloud, each stalk foot like lilac lightning that could only paddle the grass, no scorch in it but the one of numb touch. I wouldn’t qui to see if she’d quack back. I tried to be like her, with that stiff drift in which she seemed always to be her own, and never to remember she was alone. ...