Philip K Dick and the Pond Sucked Dry

The pond's been drained down a foot and a half and a city worker
with a weed trimmer is walking the edge from the inside. The ducks are settled on the exposed cement bottom
and more draining's underway, so what. He sat in his car
for an extra twenty minutes and heard the eldest daughter of Philip K. Dick
describe a father as fun, who played softball and April Fool's
and who talked to her at thirteen about the Nag Hammadi. He reclined his driver's seat,
kept his AC on, watched dry leaves fall as the temperature approached
100. The ducks missed most of this. They had other issues to explore.
Where do we go when the pond's finally dry? All the while, the red pumping machine,
with its sucking white snout, kept purring and burping as it drew
the element they know away from the where it is they live, so what. They peck at mud,
lie down in damp leaves. Neither he nor they need to understand.

Pond With Noise, Pond Without

Today, the mother and at least nine ducks are sleeping in the shade of a rock
not ten feet away and a squirrel on its stomach outstretches its legs and lays flat. It rests
its chin on its forearms. He's never seen this before.
Sitting, supposedly, in thoughtless meditation, he thinks of a therapist keeping office hours
and holding a space for a client who doesn't show by showing anyway
to sit there in her chair. He imagines fifty minutes spent considering the impact
of another's absence on one present person and gasps. All at once,
the ducklings begin preening their nine selves and the squirrel stands up and starts to scratch.
A bug begins to climb his stomach, his shirt, and one duck dips
for a swim. It's a quiet day, hotter than most, but his mind
doesn't ask why. One after the other, the remaining waddlers follow. In the distance,
in unison, children with towels march toward a pool and shout "silence" over and over and,
over them all, another one shouts "these songs are hurting my ears".