Gulls

Gulls

They came again this dawn
an avian rabble, beaked brutes
clambering over my tin roof like a break-in,
clumsy intruders poised
to storm through my skylight window,
banging open seashells
in a fusillade of clatter,
shrieking in querulous dispute
over scraps hauled from the city tip,
plumage soiled by the grime of plunder.
No longer sea-birds, you lot,
but city slickers, glutted on garbage,
forsaking the tedium of oceans
for the bedlam of the county dump
motherlode of scraps,
easy pickings for a street smart gull
idling away the afternoons on my roof,
feathers afluff and dozing in the sun –
lazy as sin,
visiting the coasts only on weekends
shamed by your dumb cousins
the albatross and petrel,
exiles traveling the lonely places
drifting across those endless, empty spaces,
wandering alone the deserts of the seas
on calm, unmoving wings.

– Jogyata.

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