By our pond a drake rests his plump body
on a rock, his mate sleeps beside him,
head under wing – a scene of perfect peace.
No voices can be heard, the afternoon is still,
traffic has almost ceased, machines are silent,
rather like a universal pause before disaster --
and the media tell us that just over a million
people have contracted the dreaded virus,
and tens of thousands are already dead.
The ducks slip off their rock into the water,
paddle a while, gobble new-born tadpoles,
until with a great beating of wings they rise
to fly away, untouched by human fears and worries.
Richard Martin is an English writer who lives in the Netherlands close to the point where Belgium, Germany and Holland meet. After retiring as a university teacher in Germany, he turned his attention to writing, and has published three collections of poetry and numerous poems in magazines in England, the US, and Austria.
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