Stork Moon

There is a stork on the top of this ancient palace wall that laid a moon in its nest like an egg. The sultan declared it a national monument but the people said let it be and time unraveled and wars were fought and the sultan died and his son was inaugurated while hands clapped in the plaza and snake charmers played flute songs and tourism tripled and the straw of the nest blew away in the strong Sahara winds. The walls of the palace shrank into museum walls, adorned with memorabilia, and when the stork returned with silver fish for its baby moon, it found a vacant wall and the habitat unrecognisably gentrified. The new sultan had come to a compromise with the people, for he was wise, and had encased the moon in glass, and set it in orbit, just outside the atmosphere so that all could see, on this night or another: a gift to make all his subjects content. And they all were, all except the stork who, to this day, flies from palace to palace, seeking something disappeared, gliding over the face of the water, with stretched wings and the glimmering reflection of the moon under its feathery belly (a shadow of the heart).