Wednesday 4 March 2020

The Herring Gull

   I watched a herring gull,
      A juvenile,
   Dig in the shingle pile
      At tide’s lull;
      It found a snail
   And vainly prised at it,
   That flesh in the shell’s pail
Unshifted by each shake or hit.
      Dancing-shrill,
   That gull on flung-out wings
   Rose in the salt air’s slings,
   The snail clutched in its bill,
   Then hurled it on the stones –
      I heard the “clack”;
Four times it soared in the wind’s groans
      To make attack.
      The shell split
   At last; seizing the meat,
      With a wing’s beat
   The gull veered to a spit,
   Green-weeded, running-wet,
   To gulp its prize, unmobbed
By other gulls. The wind’s fret
   Flurried, and the tide bobbed.
      That brown-flecked gull,
   Lean-young and screech of breath,
   Had parried hunger’s pull:
Daily he starves or metes out death.

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© July 2015