A Song For the Herring Gull

The cliff tops were bare, rocks lay scattered across the beach, the nearing harbor holding all in its silence. Along the bay the ripple of a kayak hovered on a waters edge. All was quiet, or so it seemed. Overhead clouds rolled and arched a landscape in blue, held by a shimmering backlight in grey-orange hues. Up there, amongst the rocks, movement issued the break of day. Columns of fledged juveniles headed out to the shore on surrogate wings so new in all their mottled grey glory. Clumsy at first, innocent of death, they practiced their art. Many years ago, decades ago, before our monopolized greed, these wings could learn their craft on broken hills and rock face to a sanded shore now desimated by poisoned or starved waters. How the human spirit lives on. Year by year, in urban habitat, overwhelmed by our desire to regenerate, encrypted in a culling desire, no co-existence, just hate, a lack of education, a provision of landscape in need, forcing extinction to deaths lonely door again and again. Today I watched the bonded pairs high up on the roof tops, a tireless nurture, their weakened bodies, their empathic care. I look down through the alleyways, broken wings fall or on discarded earth or through my town, hiding in corners. We are the invaders, not them.