Piping Plover - Additional Images & Videos

Plover

By Kathleen Jamie

If, while pitching my tent
West of Lochan na h-Earba,
I'd trodden on the nest 
of the ringed plover,

I'd have walked the moor
of brittle grass and tormentil
barefoot, in the summer hail
- distant from that

Small bird tilting by the water,
who finds everything
she needs there - shingle
for her four eggs; food and company.

From "Bright Wings - an Illustrated Anthology of Poems about Birds", 2010, edited by Billy Collins, Columbia University Press, New York, NY.