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gulls

WINTER

Footballers in the park grow younger, play

longer into December nights. In my garden,

leaves decompose. Fogs rise to the window.

I see my father’s features in the glass.

 

Gulls are grave, funereal in their white

seriousness. Bad weather visitors,

fickle as spume-flecks, they flitter from grass

into heavy skies, craftsmen in gravity.

 

Winter is too human for comfort.

Natural we should shudder as darkness

drifts in sooner. Ice seasons carry home

truths on incisive air.

 

 

 Note: The poem was first published on the site in December 2013.

 

 

A REALLY BIG CONVERSATION

The prime minister of the fifth largest
global economy has asserted
the need for a big conversation
about gulls: not the greedy and the fearful
who voted for him but the species
laridae, especially the herring gull
that swarms in seaside towns and marauds
the 99 Flake out of the very hands
of the innocent, young and old alike.

Adult birds dive, swoop and grab to eat –
whether mackerel or deep fried Mars Bar.
The herring gull chick knows instinctively
to peck the red spot on its parents’ beaks
for food. It learns about battered sausage
and Cornish pasties from humans lording it.

Though herring gulls have a repertory
of voices – the mew, the yodel, the yelp,
the yuck, the cry, the snicker, the snigger,
the bark, the scoff, the cough, the scold, the plea,
the ullulation – from coastal roof tops
and are experts at inland waste management
they are endangered. Let us converse then
about concern and care.

 

 

 

WINTER

Footballers in the park grow younger, play

longer into December nights. In my garden,

leaves decompose. Fogs rise to the window.

I see my father’s features in the glass.

 

Gulls are grave, funereal in their white

seriousness. Bad weather visitors,

fickle as spume-flecks, they flitter from grass

into heavy skies, craftsmen in gravity.

 

Winter is too human for comfort.

Natural we should shudder as darkness

drifts in sooner. Ice seasons carry home

truths on incisive air.

 

 

LANDFALL

i

 

When swifts no longer sickle the twilight

and gulls beat inland, when clouds pass like

drift ice and a reaper’s moon is rising

like a blooded eye, leaves spiral almost

like tears. In the unlit house, a voice murmurs.

 

ii

 

At flood tide, winds off the waters abuse

the cherry tree and batter the fences.

Just out of hearing, the rolling fathoms calm

to torn branches, occasional ice and

the slow intimation of landfall.

 

 

 

FAR ABOVE RUBIES

The silence woke her. Beyond the locked door

by now her maids should be chattering

in that harsh tongue. She went to the window.

Even the gulls on the battlements were mute.

And no guards on the ramparts, nobody

in the bailey. The straits were the colour

of the emerald at her neck – her father’s

wedding gift. A barque moved edgily

through the sands. Its pennants spoke of home.

The island’s coast was clear in the sun.

She imagined the light summer wind

stirring its fecund, strategic fields.

Her door was unlocked, opened and flung wide.

The Prince held a red cloth. “Cover your eyes.”

As she tied the cloth in place, he said,

“Who can find a virtuous woman?”

He put his hand in the small of her back,

steering her from her chamber into his,

impelling her to the window. She felt

the gentle air from the valley, inhaled

the woods and the river. He pulled the cloth

hard from her head.  Eyes shocked wide in death,

her lover hung from a gibbet. She watched

the body move this way, that way; listened

to the rope creak; turned to her husband.

“Until I die, I shall count the years

I will have loved him as a benison.”

 

 

Note: The poem has subsequently been published at

http://thirdsundaybc.com/2012/04/15/vol-1-no-4/

 

LOOKING FOR PUFFINS: SOUTH STACK REVISITED – POEM FOR OUR DAUGHTER

South Stack, Ynys Môn, ©Sylvia Selzer 2009

 

Of course, by the time it’s my turn at the ’scope

the bugger’s turned its back. ‘It is a puffin,’

reassures the RSPB girl – and,

since she’s pretty and young, I believe

that what I see is not one of the teeming,

noisy, noisome, nesting guillemots,

razorbills or gulls. A hat trick: ageism,

sexism, anthropomorphism – plus

being churlish as a bear rather than

valiant as a lion. Intriguing opposites. Grrr!

We came here last when she was five or six.

Decades on, she stands with her lover

at a turn in the steps –  both happy,

both blooming with her longed-for future,

and wrestling with the breeze for your camera.


Some gulls have eschewed the crowded cliffs

to nest in the lighthouse’s disused kitchen garden.

We lean on the wall like pig farmers.

There is a dead chick amongst the gooseberries.

A living one stands, yes, surprised, startled but resolute

though even here winds roar like lions or bears.

I hold my breath…1,2,3…for us all.

 

Note: this piece has been subsequently published in ‘A Jar of Sticklebacks’ – http://www.armadillocentral.com/general/a-jar-of-sticklebacks-by-david-selzer.