Feathered Aphrodite

There is a lone female duck that lives in our backyard. No males try to lure her away for illicit duck-sex, not last year and not this year, either. All the other ducks have long since paired off for some serious nest sitting and egg hatching. All but her. She isn’t even allowed near the nesting site. Perhaps the other ducks are shunning her for some transgression?

I’m not sure what it is about her that the other males don’t find attractive. Perhaps her small limp has disqualified her genetic material from being passed on? Or it could be that she doesn’t want to settle down with Mr. Drake, but is more interested in finding the hen of her dreams. We live in a small town. If that’s the case, like the human lesbians around here, she doesn’t have much opportunity for that type of relationship. Is she a grieving widow who lost her soul mate and can never give her heart to another? My husband and I have spent many an evening creating tales about how her single status came to be and why it continues.

Whatever the reason for her solitude, I must say that we enjoy watching her. She sleeps under our Cypress trees at night and suns herself in our lawn during the warmth of the day. We have a small pond with a fountain that is large enough for a mallard to swim in, which she does, and my husband puts out piles of seed for her to eat, which she also does.

It’s a warm, but very breezy late spring day. I decide to take a break from a very tedious project involving finances and spreadsheets. A few moments drinking a cup of tea while sitting on the back steps sounds like heaven. Perhaps I’ll get to watch “our little girl” swimming in the pond.

Luck was with me. I sat down just in time to see her waddle-limp her way across the lawn toward the pond. Swim or a bath, I wondered? Swim. I settled into the warmth of the terra cotta colored stone steps, my hands wrapped around the mug.

The surface of the pond was strewn with petals from one of our bushes. This bush looked half dead when we bought the house a few years ago, but we cut it back to see if it would recover. This spring it is full and lush, long branches full of clusters of flowers that look like small delicate pink roses.

She slips into the water, all grace, no trace of a limp in the water, cutting a path through the petals. Her neck is arched regally and her eyes half lidded with pleasure. The wind blows through the slender birch trees rustling the leaves. It blows through the flowering bush, launching more mini roses. Petals swirl in the air around her body. I must have made some noise. In a gesture both coy and bold she looks back over her wing at me and our eyes meet.

At that moment, at that exact moment, she was no longer a pitiful lone female. She was Feathered Aphrodite, the Goddess incarnate. Lovely beyond all imagining, alluring, mesmerizing. Brighter than the sunlight reflecting off the drops of water falling from the fountain. The smell of blossoms fills the air and She tosses Her head as if to invite me to laugh with Her over some shared intimate joke.

It couldn’t have lasted more than a few breaths, then the moment was gone. It doesn’t matter. I am stunningly grateful, for it was more than just a glimpse at something pretty.

One moment I knew what was reality, a poor duck that was pushed out from the flock during mating and nesting time. Alone and unloved, unable to attract a mate. That may be. At the same time, She is also the most beautiful and proud creature on the earth.  It just took such a small shift in my frame of mind to be able to see Her. A Goddess bathing in rose strewn waters to refresh Her beauty, as She has done since before man walked the earth.

What else am I blind to? How much laughter and beauty do I miss because I have decided it isn’t there? I struggle to put into words what that moment revealed to me and I fail. My heart knows, my soul knows, that will have to be good enough.

You can’t be touched by a Goddess and not expect changes in your life. The very next day, our little girl was again swimming in our pond. This time she was not alone. A young, but very handsome drake, glided along beside her. How could he resist a lady the Cyprian has graced?