Now I Understand Death
(The Seagull)


More a Marlowe morn than Chekhov
While the mist is hanging low
not far shy of padded bed
My legs are stiffened
The clouds are red.

Refreshing walk
No need to call or to talk
my breath, a cloud
Fingers numb
a mind so proud
and people glum

The beauty of an English dawn.

The gulls fly over
yelling and vocal
This scene of urban nature
the flock; it swells
forcing to compel
and under a spell

One by one, they swoop
An arc of flight
From tree to roof top
beading eyes that glisten
seem so human in this light
the morning hazed
the day is cold
the sky ablaze.

An end is near
and here, the deathbed
The sky is red.

I walk and pass and rub
My hands together
cold blood is stopped
as I see a glint charging from the corner
The spectre of a bus

The pneumatic brakes cry hissing
the doors fly open
Battering and mashing
The gull
Now still
but a leg still twitching
Guts and blood - a palette of gore
Seeping in concrete
and licking the curb

It whines in the mist
This morning has been kissed
With death

And now the flock is left
Bereft, of a life
The death and pain in the morning
Is ignored
The people worship apathy
They refute the obvious
They are bored.

And tonight
There will be one less to fly over
This, a famous town
as the leaves fall limp around
the White Cliffs of Dover.

And nature's blood that morning bled
The chilly air
The clouds are red.

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