By midmorning the pond already had a queue. Not for snacks, which the keeper has been gently discouraging, but for a ledger propped on a dry stone, weighted with a pebble and a ribbon the color of quiet water.
We asked at the kiosk by the path. A woman with a folded newspaper said the speckled duck signs first because she has the neatest toes, and the others wait as if they were at the bakery.
The keeper posted a small notice: wet signatures welcome; please shake once over the grass, not over the book. In the margins he answers with tiny compliments about the duckweed, how evenly it floats, how it makes the water look as if it remembered to comb its hair.