This garden is higher than mosquito flight
and still you have come,
traveling miles from the real sea
to dip your beak
in this hotel’s artificial blue.
You stand beneath the sprinkler
hunched up like an old man,
feet deep in green,
damp as your distant shore.
From the breakfast terrace
we wait for movement,
ruffle of feathers, twist of spindle leg,
anything to show you are still alive.
Returning from work we scan
flower beds, bushes to find you
fluffed up, roof-resting in the sun.
At night your head disappears.
I watch you shrink to a cotton ball,
drawing me to my window
time after time,
as if I am salt water
and you, the moon I’m tied to.
Fiona Ritchie Walker is a Scot from Montrose, Angus, who now lives in England. A former journalist, she worked for a fair trade company for many years, visiting producers around the world and helping them to share their stories. She writes poetry and short fiction, with work widely published in the UK and has also read on BBC radio.
