Back to the Black Ducks

January 29, 2006

“Second Time Around” is the name of the new & used shop at 40 Kings Road in Sydney Nova Scotia. It sits with its back to the bay at the mouth of the creek running down from Wentworth Park. It used to be a service station. These are the new details but not the last details. The Black Ducks of Sydney paddle up and down this short stretch of the murky creek. Today there were eighty-nine of them. It was ten degrees below zero but the bay was not completely frozen over, as it was the last time I was here. There is excavation across the road and it seems like more construction debris has made its way in and around the creek. A half buried orange pylon breaches and reveals its spine. Submerged snow fencing like soggy black bunting is there across the brown shallow trench to catch the bigger pieces of broken asphalt as they float under the roadway to the harbour. A lone shopping cart lists on the high bank filled with old damp cardboard and plastic bags. The wet rocks are mossy green when exposed and the frozen salted drifts of snow that shore up the mouth of the creek are decorated with yellow stripes tracing along their relief map curves. There is a constant rhythmic clank as wind whips around the yellow aluminum sided box of a building and lifts a few loose aluminum louvers. The wind makes its own sounds in the dry tan grass that pokes from holes in the snow. The same wind shapes the water into the tight curls of a Betty Crocker icing advert and pushes the whole blue cake to shore on a treadmill. The ducks quack if you get close. A sense of community blossoms with a tough life. Good to be back.