Diver At An Estuary

To celebrate the birth of Emily Hughes
The sky, the day, the season turning;
light starkly silver as a bell …
Obliquely, with and against the stream,
the duckling dived and, gloved in clearness,
swam to where its will and the tide's drift
moved to place it, the ridged wake intricate
as a pinion, shawling the brimming silk.
Then the pattern as before — each impulse, arc,
a fresh continuous birthing into a body poised
between transparencies of air and water, a slant
of sun stroking the earth-coloured wings.