Gulls

I have grown to love the great play of gulls
trailing their toes in the rich winds of noon,
       or held, stretched on a cry, poised
                       one moment
               over the doomed ranks of the sea,

​

and then that plummet, strike, and heave-aloft
plunder-dark from the shoal—the scavenged wrack
       of tide-clutter torn by the beak toward flight
                       and the quick fish
               gone to the swifter quick in the kill—

​

game, greed, and gut-scrap, turned in the spells
of the guiltless tides and the sea’s childing, turned
       to the surge in the blood where the full flood breaks
                       to an innocence
               blessed in the broad gesture of flight.

​

Whatever the winds or the gale-swung buoys or the weather-bells
call, come suns or the hunched storms, my gulls,
       savage and unstained, ascend
                       in sun-drenched
               play—stunning, ravening, brief.

​

​

​