Something grey something fast
crashes shivering past my eye
A seagull, babe young
fusses about the bins
like grandmothers fuss over
afternoon tea, biscuits, and grandsons
One leg is gone, completely and though
his wings are spread in a grand gesture
they prove useless in my tight alley
so close to earth, still,
instinctual, they flutter
flutter
flap
pause
he is thinking
he is thinking about his options as
his mother looks down from the roof
as only mothers can and ignores his cries
Nature, I think,
folding my newspaper carefully on my knee,
the headline reading:
‘SCHOOL MASSACRE, OVER 130 CHILDREN DEAD’
Nature can be very cruel
MY TROUBLED MIND 
interesting, and disturbing… I’m not sure, well written but …I’m not sure i understand
Thanks cote. We, humans, are also a part of the ‘cruel nature’ that the protagonist observes through the misfortune of the seagull.
Too true. Nature (which still includes humans, though some of us think it doesn’t), “red in tooth and claw.”
mmm . . .provoking. This mother bird can do no more to protect her child and as she watches she know the outcome. So many of our mothers who have been raising their children, some with love, some with neglect, some with indifference and some with hope for their future can also do no more than watch when something greater than themselves takes hold and determines that their child is the one who is going to fall today and they can do nothing other than watch . . . and mourn
“his mother looks down from the roof
as only mothers can and ignores his cries
Nature, I think,”
Hmm. The feeling or thoughts that come to mind here, for me, are that this is NOT a “good mother” not in the world that we would want, and in, say, the elepant world it would not happen like this either, from what I have read…No elephant or whale would simply IGNORE the cries of her infant! so there is something going on here, and I trust you mean it deliberately…a connection between the cruelty of the seagull mother’s ignoring her infant’s terrible plight and your apparent indifference to the massacre of so many young ones, the students killed by gun men, presumably so far away that you can do nothing about it? This also seems to be a commentary on how disconnected we become to “nature” and each other when things like a massacre of 130 children happen…How we read about such things in the paper so often that we become inured to it, and just read it and ignore the extraordinary tragedy of it, “just another massacre” — again!
Thank you for this poem!
I worry for my grandchildren.this world seems to be going in a bad direction.