A Ruddy Shelduck

A ruddy shelduck is, in Buddhist lands,

Revered. In Italy, this duck is deemed

Untouchable. In Donald Junior’s hands,

Ducks have to be shot dead to be esteemed.

Don wasn’t sure what bird he had shot at,

Yet bragged it was incredible to shoot

So rare a waterfowl, implying that

He’d bagged it, on Venetian game-pursuit

Estate lands … Then he learned the duck implies

Legalities: to shoot it was a crime …

“Do you have proof I bagged it? Other guys,

Uploading buckshot at the selfsame time,

Confound the issue!” Don says now. “Though we

Know someone shot it, who can prove it’s me?”

 

Mike Mesterton-Gibbons is a Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Florida State University who has returned to live in his native England. His acrostic sonnets have appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Better Than Starbucks, The Creativity Webzine, Current Conservation, the Ekphrastic Review, Grand Little Things, Light, Lighten Up Online, MONO, the New Verse News, Oddball Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review, the Satirist, the Washington Post and WestWard Quarterly. The poem was prompted by the CNN story, “Donald Trump Jr. accused of shooting protected rare duck in Venice lagoon.”