On A Drowned Magpie Poem by Francis Duggan

Quite powerless to help it since I cannot swim
And it's chances of survival to say the least slim
It flapped it's wings desperately as it did drown
In the river three miles from the big coastal town.

On learning to fly into the river it did fall
To survive like us birds do need luck after all
A fact of mortality and facts do never lie
Is like people birds too in their young lives do die.

Quite powerless to help it with alarm in their cry
The parent birds in circles above it did fly
But their young one had stopped struggling in the water it lay
A would be feathered minstrel in dark brown and gray.

On bushes and trees the birds whistle and sing
On this sunny and beautiful day in the Spring
The dead magpie lay where the water is deep
And Nature for her deceased never has tears to weep.