A Birder in the Workplace

I don’t know how the conversation started at the other end of the office.

Angela was saying to Mickey, “It’s a goose.”

“What’s a goose?” I asked

“The bird in the AFLAC commercial.”

I rose from my desk and walked the length of the office.

“Angela, it’s a duck.”

“It’s a goose, it’s white.”

“Ducks can be white. Muscovy ducks, domestic ducks, Long Island ducks.

They’re all white.”

She insisted that ducks aren’t white.

Not having a picture handy, I turned to poetry.

“Angela, geese go HONK! Ducks go QUACK!

Which one rhymes with AFLAC?”

So stunned is she with my indisputable proof

That she walks back to her desk and answers the phone

While I walk back to mine, happy to use poetics

In everyday life.

Clockwise from top left: Domestic ducks (Rouen on right), Colliers Mills; Muscovy Duck, Fletcher Lake;
Domestic Ducks, Clove Lakes Park