Fledgling
 
​On the rocky ledge
a fledgling keens
mother gull hovers,
the flock swooping down,
screeching, when we get too close.
 
Stretching out brown flecked wings,
it nearly takes off,
but then refolds itself
head sinking deeper
staring out to sea
as mother whirls about
in flying demonstrations
it wilfully ignores.
 
There every morning
we become used
to its high pitched call
whipped by gusts of wind
as boats putter past below.
 
One morning it is gone.
We look down over the rail
a hundred feet below –
one, two, three fledglings
on rocks by the sea
arcing in and out
in minor swoops and dips
of giddy first flight.
 
Later, I go down for a swim
in the tiny rocky cove
to find a fledgling
dead on the stones
head skewed to one side.
 
Oh soft feathered gull
oily gleam to your neck
black beady eye
I touch you
but can only feel
a bony hard quill.
 
I build a stony circle
a double layered cairn
an ellipse for a bird
that might have been ours.
 

© copyright Alison Hackett, first posted online 27 April 2017