I have written several poems about gulls - annoying "flying rats" as many call them, but always fascinating to me. In November 2014 I wrote "Gulls Landing: An Observation" about a flock of blackhead gulls. Its purpose was simply to document what I had seen and make a few speculations. It didn't occur to me at the time but it seems to me now to be rather in the tradition of Erasmus Darwin's scientific poetry which, again, was much concerned with precise observation. I posted "Gulls Landing" on 22 November 2018; it is linked here.
---------------
Returned from the beach
I found a brute herring gull
Attacking the corpse
Of a roadkill young pigeon,
Tossing it like a duster.
Its back feathers stripped,
The gull gouged to its innards,
Quarrelling out strips
Of guts, gulped down with relish –
Meatier prize than bread scraps!
Full fifteen minutes,
Dodging the passing cars’ wheels,
Tugging that body
From road to pavement to road,
It gorged greedily at speed.
Ah, Lady Macbeth,
Bloodied of hands and night-dress
And “who would have thought...!”
That gull’s white head, yellow beak,
Were red-drenched by the pigeon’s
Oxygen-bright blood:
Lord, how its chaps must have reeked
Of blood and flesh’s
Tart sour gases. Uncaring,
It ransacked ever deeper,
Ripping out liver
And heart – purpled, mucus’d gobs,
Swallowing them whole,
And flinging that pigeon-rag
High; its wings, feathers, loll head –
Glaring-eyed – flopping
Mutely in death’s helplessness.
Yet crass are the gulls,
Crude as the log crocodile
Hurling its prey to all points,
Void of the crow’s dodge
Of one foot grasping its prize,
Thus firming it for
Defilement: lacking also
The hawk’s hook beak, powerful
To rend the breast flesh
That, tool-less, a gull can’t scoop;
So, feed’s end, what’s left’s
Not a bared carcass, rather
A grimy hollowed puppet.
Well, all gut-strippings
Eaten, losing interest,
Languidly the gull
Flew off, leaving that battered
Clout, knocked by cars in the road.
And come night a fox
Will grub it up, sneak it down
Some alley. Next day
Only a stain will be left
To hint there was life then death.
====================
© July 2024
---------------
Returned from the beach
I found a brute herring gull
Attacking the corpse
Of a roadkill young pigeon,
Tossing it like a duster.
Its back feathers stripped,
The gull gouged to its innards,
Quarrelling out strips
Of guts, gulped down with relish –
Meatier prize than bread scraps!
Full fifteen minutes,
Dodging the passing cars’ wheels,
Tugging that body
From road to pavement to road,
It gorged greedily at speed.
Ah, Lady Macbeth,
Bloodied of hands and night-dress
And “who would have thought...!”
That gull’s white head, yellow beak,
Were red-drenched by the pigeon’s
Oxygen-bright blood:
Lord, how its chaps must have reeked
Of blood and flesh’s
Tart sour gases. Uncaring,
It ransacked ever deeper,
Ripping out liver
And heart – purpled, mucus’d gobs,
Swallowing them whole,
And flinging that pigeon-rag
High; its wings, feathers, loll head –
Glaring-eyed – flopping
Mutely in death’s helplessness.
Yet crass are the gulls,
Crude as the log crocodile
Hurling its prey to all points,
Void of the crow’s dodge
Of one foot grasping its prize,
Thus firming it for
Defilement: lacking also
The hawk’s hook beak, powerful
To rend the breast flesh
That, tool-less, a gull can’t scoop;
So, feed’s end, what’s left’s
Not a bared carcass, rather
A grimy hollowed puppet.
Well, all gut-strippings
Eaten, losing interest,
Languidly the gull
Flew off, leaving that battered
Clout, knocked by cars in the road.
And come night a fox
Will grub it up, sneak it down
Some alley. Next day
Only a stain will be left
To hint there was life then death.
====================
© July 2024
