Overkill

Overkill

Mother's cooked up way too much.

She doesn't just make duck but makes pintail ducks,

wood ducks, ruddy ducks, eider ducks, fulvis tree ducks,

widgeons, cinnamon teals, red breasted mergansers,

on and on, a redundancy of duck.

Still she urges more on us, pushes the plate toward us.

Fescue fingers up the sidewalks.

Chickweed loiter at the curb.

Trumpet vine clasps the gate shut.

Profligate snails dance through

their seventeen hours of foreplay,

leaving trails all over.

Cottony packets stuffed

with baby spiders hang in the back of our closets

until we carry them out at arm's length.

Bagworms wrap the redbuds

and gorge until we split them open.

There's no end to her excess.

Dandelion blow sticks to the sappy trunk of the white pine.

Millions of sperm bulge in teenaged boys.

And babies drop into dumpsters at dances.