Seabirds of the North Atlantic: Gulls

The Gulls at Isles of Shoals

Ah! the ubiquitous herring gull.
How they haunted me as a child:
At times, placid as mallards,
Or bending their wings in the breeze,
Hung motionless,
Poised to fall
on food

I held up
Bread crusts and fish bits
While they fought to take
The morsels from my hand.

At Isles of Shoals
We saw their rookeries on Smuttynose.
(the grim shack and weathered headstones
overrun with pale vines of dodder)
My sister and I walked there
A hundred years after.
No one told us there was murder done.

The gulls there wheeled
Around us screaming.
As we passed among the nests,
Some birds would swoop
To steal a hatchling
From another's brood.

We left in horror
As they tore
The chicks apart;
Screaming, in midair.

We both stayed silent
On the long row home.

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A Shell, On the Beach

I found this shell, a fragment on the sand;
A poets perfect spiral cracked by time,
Crushed by tides, abandoned on the shore.

The gulls were done with what had lived inside.
The striped shell and pearl insides, both picked clean.
Snails and crabs had scoured the smallest chambers.

The empty test left me dreaming of whorls;
Imperfect spirals wraped around my heart.
Each cell extended life another day.

Between the sun and wave I lost my self`.
A great sound echoed in that broken shell:
Cupped against my ear, something lost returned.

All along the beach a great silence fell.
My empty head against a broken shell.

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Re: A Shell, On the Beach

Very nice, William… the first one is shocking in its honesty and harshness but well written..
The shell, I know these whirls… I know that sound and I rejoice with the empty head.

Welcome to A Room For Rumi!  It is so nice to have you here.

Metta

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Metta Said....

Thanks, Metta,
the first poem needs…
something.
written from a memory, a simple photo triggered this.
my sister and i actually saw this when we were children.
Years Later I saw the film, The Weight of Water, and I was shocked to learn that the island was the site of a brutal murder in the 19th century. The cruelty of the seagulls and the strange parasitic dodder vines, seemed to blend with the story of the film.
The novel on which the screenplay was based may be quite good.

None of this has much to do with Rumi,
but still i see him there on the shore,
long robe whipped by the wind,
wondering at a god
who fills us with bliss
passion and rage
all at once,
then leaves us
empty on the beach
waiting for a listening ear.

-william

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