For Nigel The Gannet Poem by Keith Shorrocks Johnson

Nigel wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats aloft the waves and billows,
When all at once he saw a crowd,
… A bevy of birds for bedfellows,
Beside the cliff, above the seas,
Stoned and plastered in the breeze.

Decked as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in straggling line
Along the margins of the bay:
Eighty or more saw he at a glance,
Bobbing beaks in zonked out legless dance.

The waves below them broke; but they
Out-did the sparkling spray's display:
And any gannet guy would sure be gay,
In such bird-brained, blockhead company:
He strutted, preened—but rarely thought
What dearth the show to him had brought.

But when at last he came to die
Still lacking consummation
It flashed upon his inward eye
Cement had blocked persuasion
And then his heart with sorrow filled
For courtships that the concrete stilled.