The Seagull

When I was a child, before I knew the word

for a snowstorm, before I remember

a tree or a field,

I saw an endless grey slate afternoon coming,

I knew a bird singing in the sun,

was the same as a dog barking in the dark.

A pigeon in a blizzard fluttered

against a kitchen window,

—my first clear memory of terror,

I kept secret, my intimations

I kept secret.

This winter I hung a grey and white stuffed

felt seagull from the cord of my window shade,

a reminder of good times by the sea,

of Chekhov and impossible love.

I took comfort from the gull, the graceful shape

sometimes lifted a wing in the drafty room.

Once when I looked at the gull I saw

through the window a living seagull glide

toward me then disappear,—what a rush of life!

I remember its hereness,

while inside the room

the senseless symbol

little more than a bedroom slipper

dangled on a string.

Beyond argument, my oldest emotion

hangs like a gull in the distant sky.

Eyes behind bars of mud and salt

see some dark thing below,

—my roof under the sea.

Only the sky is taken for granted.

In the quiet morning light,

terror’s the only bird I know,

—although birds have fed from my hand.