Riverside Walk Poem by Francis Duggan

The wildering flowers bloom beautiful and gay
Along the green banks of the water way
And joyful songbirds whistling merrily
With tiny hearts brimful of ecstasy.

And all seem perfect save for water flowing gray
But pollution is a common thing nowaday
And keeping rivers clean don't appeal to modern man
As it's not part of his progression plan.

From her nest midst water reeds dark moorhen fly
And she utter forth a shrill like chirping cry
A warning to her little moorhen chicks
To leave their nest and head for cover quick.

From reed built nest four young dark moorhens creep
With bright orange bills and as they swim they cheep
And head for cover towards the river bank
And hide themselves midst rushes green and rank.

I walked along in pensive solitude
And a quarter mile down stream from Moorhen brood
I came upon what I don't often times see
A mallard out swimming with family.

From mother duck a warning sound did ring
She beat the water with her flapping wings
And her seven ducklings her signal did obey
And dived under water and hid themselves away.

The mother duck was circling in the sky
Whilst all of the time on me she kept an eye
And her anxiety for her family did grow
And she quacked aloud warning them not to show.

And as I walked homeward in the gloam of day
The wildborn birds piped with the joys of May
And my thoughts were of wild duck and moorhen
And tainted water for man a shameful sin.