Bachelor Ducks

Bachelor Ducks

You sit on mowed suburban lawns,
fussing at each other
or animatedly chatting—
I can’t tell which

Nestling together
snoozing
on a cool spring morning

Sometimes two
Sometimes three

But where, neighborhood drakes, are your women?

Last year I saw one with eight
ducklings trailing behind

What’s your part in that?

Michelle Tremmel, Ph.D. is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at Iowa State University. For 20 years she taught middle and high school English in Michigan, and she now works primarily with pre-service middle and high school English teachers and graduate teaching assistants teaching writing. Among her publications are articles in the Journal of Teaching Writing, Teaching English in the Two-Year College, and Composition Studies on working with student writers.