Seagulls

It was a wet but warm evening

nudging sunset,

a linen sky,

cries from a seagull left behind;

alone among the procession about the harbour

I paused to let a stroller pass

just then to realise that I was not, in fact, happy

merely happier.

 

An unwanted epiphany

as most epiphanies are

 

and one which made me look back

in search of that bird,

alien no longer but kindred perhaps,

the assumption I’d made about him

forcing the change from sympathy to empathy

as is always the case when another's distress

echoes our own.

 

This new life, but six months in,

reframed by a random thought

pushing up in the space I'd allowed

in allowing a father to pass with his sleeping child

 

though my view of the seagull's cry

itself speculative and fanciful -

his cry in truth indistinguishable

from those of hunger or of warning -

had hinted at the conscious thought to come.

 

We can fool ourselves but not our hearts it seems,

despite the want or need to do so:

but standing in the midst of a procession

is foolish if not selfish,

so I’ll follow the seagull

 

either out to sea

or home.