All along the backwater,
Through the rushes tall,
Ducks are a dabbling,
Up tails all!
Ducks’ tails, drakes’ tails,
Yellow feet a-quiver,
Yellow bills all out of sight
Busy in the river.
– Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
I love Eddie Askew’s ability to take something as simple and as laughable as ducks dabbling, and draw deep spiritual truths from it. Apparently the verb, ‘to dabble’ is used to describe a duck’s activity in feeding, head down, tail up, grazing on the plant life just below the surface of the water:
Maybe we should all dabble a bit more. Try to get below the surface of life and take hold of some of the possibilities that could open up if we just went a little bit deeper. And, who knows, maybe one day we’ll be ready to dive.
– Eddie Askew, Dabbling with Ducks. TLM publishing, 2007