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.