Ducks and Leaf Art

Happy Saturday friends.

Ducks and Leaf Art

I spent the morning enjoying the wood ducks and mallards swimming in the pond and at a Zoom meeting of an art group making leaf art. It was so good to see the ducks back in the pond. They had been absent for much of the late summer and early fall but a few have returned this week.

I love the way their swimming creates ripples in the pond and how the different kinds of light look different at various times of day. It amazes me that a pond that was covered with some kind of green growth for much of the summer looks so clear and clean again. Even the leaves that covered the pond surface have mostly sunk to its depths.

Mornings at Blackwater

For years, every morning, I drank
from Blackwater Pond.
It was flavored with oak leaves and also, no doubt,
the feet of ducks.

And always it assuaged me
from the dry bowl of the very far past.

What I want to say is
that the past is the past,
and the present is what your life is,
and you are capable
of choosing what will be, darling citizen.

So come to the pond,
or the river of your imagination,
or the harbor of your longing,

and put your lips to the world.
And live
your life.

   — Mary Oliver

What are you doing this beautiful Saturday in October? You could always look for some ducks and make some leaf art.

May you walk in beauty.