This week's Friday Fictioneers' photo prompt, taken by The Reclining Gentleman and posted on https://rochellewisofffields.wordpress.com/
sent my mind into verse, which is preferable to the REverse it's been in since we moved last week from Tenerife to Sussex.
When I've got my act together I shall create a new blog - I can no longer call myself 'expat' - and I hope you will follow me to that new online venue.
Meanwhile, here's my poem.
WATERBIRD
Rumble of
cars lulls my babies to dreamland
Safe on
our island which nobody sees -
Concrete foundations
trap silt from the river
And grass
for our nest grows from wind-carried seeds.
Here by
the river beneath heedless traffic
Barges chug
slowly and, stirred by their wakes,
Mud from
the bottom floats up to the surface
Carrying morsels
of food for my chicks.
No fox
will swim through the eddies around us,
No cat
will risk the climb down from the road -
Man has
destroyed my natural habitat
But still
inadvertently shelters my brood.