Looking Out at the Bay

I thought we would enjoy something away from the dreary weary analysis of our continuing crisis. That’ll sure hold for another day. Here is my continuing effort to write a poem.

Looking Out at the Bay

Winter

Kate and I live on a bay called Moriches.

Our theatre to the world outside,
A twenty foot glass wall.

Off in the distance lies Fire Island.

The name comes from fires set
To warn incoming square riggers to stay clear.

Now a barrier beach.
It keeps the Atlantic Ocean out of our backyard.

A little way east is Swan Island.

Home it seems to thousands of gulls,
Called Herring, Bonaparte’s, Laughing and Great Black-backed.

One summer day I sailed into their home,
Dive bombed and screamed at by flocks,
I learned what “intruder” meant,
With due apologies and inordinate haste
I was out of there.

Now I watch the Gulls in the morning
Making there fifteen mile flight to where?

The Town of Brookhavens dump
For a great feast of garbage.

It’s a gull war for the best of the dump.

A piece of chicken here, a piece of bread there.

No matter, this is their feast.

The trip home may be a stop at our beach
For a clam or crab and a high flight
And a drop to crack it open.

It’s not necessarily the droppers
As other Bonapate’s on their way home
Will scream and continue to fight for each morsel.

As a man of rationality I wonder about Gull efficiency?
Fifteen miles west fifteen miles east,
Just for some old garbage feast?

Don’t make much sense to me.

Oh you see the difference?

Gulls just do what they have to do.

While we humans concentrate and ruminate
On what we are doing and why?

Thank you Kate N.H.W.Y.