A murmuration of poems

Gull Circus.

A gull's a gull until
underneath the clamour

of roustabouts and acrobats
wheeling and soaring

something looks wrong
a fledgling with a trailing wing

a damaged pinion hanging awkwardly
as it flexes it's wings and forages

with other young birds on the industrial roof
what of a bird that however hard it tries

to flap the not quite perfect wing
as it is willed into flight by the gull chavavari *

and cajoled with a chorus of lesser black back cries
in their dawn to dusk gallus cloud-swinging chivvying

the whole raucous circus may one day
move on without it


* a circus term meaning a gathering of all kinds of acts involved in a circus.



A welcome deceit.*

Criss-crossing peat and sedge
pee - wit, teu - chit,
a Flopwing** calls, rolls on velvet wings,
sub-divides,
flaps and dives above the coastal pasture
in Lapwynge** rapture.
So common once,
how this wandering dancer consoles.
Cornchwiglen,** Peewit,**
ever go stravaigin.***


*  a group name for a flock of Lapwing.

** I've also used a number of names for the bird used throughout Britain.

*** Scots word meaning wandering.


The squabs* are swimming.

Who notices the fledglings,
their dark flightless bodies heavy with fat,
dropping hundreds of feet
off Bass Rock ledges,
to swim and swim away,
until they find their wings,
all the way to the Equator,
Guga, Sula, Zether. **

If they survive the ocean storms
or lethal plunge-dives
from older gannets,
if they survive to fly
they'll eventually return,
Morus bassanus,**
back to the blizzard of birds,
circling a plug of earth in the brightest vortex.


* name for a young gannet or pigeon.

** Latin names for the Gannet.