Poem For People Who Aren't Poem Fans

Today I had the pleasure of finding this email in the old inbox. It's from Seth Nadel, my talmid some years back. As I wrote him, I love the fact that we can reference things cryptically and know exactly what the other means by Netziv as a little boy and Reb Zusia story.

I looked up the title and author as Seth has it and couldn't find it on google, finally I found it on this site broken up differently, and with a slightly different title, and attributed to anonymous. I'll have to ask my roommate at work Mr. Douglas Dunton who first told Seth the poem all those years ago.


Shalom Rabbi Fleischmann,

How are you? Do you know this poem? It's my favorite. I've taught along with the story of the Netziv as a little boy and the Reb Zushe story.

Three Tame Ducks
By Kenneth Kaufman

There are three tame ducks in our backyard
Dabbling in mud and trying hard
To get their share and maybe more
Of the overflowing barnyard store,
Satisfied with the task they're at
Of eating and sleeping and getting fat
But whenever the free wild ducks go by
in a long line streaming down the sky,
They cock a quizzical puzzled eye
And flap their wings and try to fly.

I think my soul is a tame old duck
Dabbling around in barnyard muck,
Fat and lazy with useless wings.
But sometimes when the north wind sings
And the wild ones hurtle overhead,
It remembers something lost and dead,
And cocks a wary, bewildered eye
And makes a feeble attempt to fly.
It's fairly content with the state it's in,
But it isn't the duck it might have been.