Riverside Walk

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.