The Coot's Chick Poem by June Walker

is fluffy slate
and smokey grey-
circling in water- pestering, peeping.
Her mother, jet black with milk white arrowhead beak,
dives deep under water, pulls up bottom dwelling weeds,
in a long trail of slimy
moss across oily water,
in front of chick's myopic stare.
‘There and there, ' she points with her bill.
And the chick splashes and gags weeds,
as if she had six siblings.
And her mother looks on with contended care.