I sent this photo to a bunch of people who help us with the creation of the Karuna Vihar calendar every year. These are the hard-core calendar fans, the ones who wait eagerly for its arrival each year and who read each word it contains carefully and critically. I treasure their involvement and delight in the process and I depend upon them for their advice on which poems and which photos to go with.

This particular one I wasn’t really sure of: I love it, and it always makes me laugh, but I wasn’t sure it would work for a whole month. so I sent it out to my team, asking for their opinion. Ninety percent agreed that it’s funny and fun, but wouldn’t go the distance. One respondent, however, felt the ducks deserved a little more than just a rejection slip.

Nicola Tansley, a new friend but a long-time calendar fan, composed the following, which she calls

An Ode To Rejected Ducks:

I wandered lonely as a duck
That floats forlorn o’er lakes and rills,
When all at once I saw a ruck,
Of most peculiar – daffodils?
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Nodding and quacking in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They posed erect in motley line,
Each face upheld in proud display:
Five of them saw I at a glance
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

Then, as I pondered on the sight
A chorus crossed the great divide:
“Are we the essence of delight
Or is our fame to be denied?
Ah, that the world should never see
A brood so amiable as we.”

But oft, when on my nest I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon my inward eye,
That laughing, playful little brood;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
But were they ducks – or daffodils?

(Sorry, Wordsworth – but I never liked your original much anyway!)