The Eagle-Seagull Affair for Tom Binnie (1957-2005) in fond memory

An Arctic eagle tore the head off

A black-backed herring gull,

Sat down at the end of a rock wharf

On the Harraseeket at Wolf’s Neck,

In Freeport, Maine, and calmly,

Despite getting buzzed

By two smaller American bald ones,

Had it for lunch. Then it arose, leaving

A confetti of napkin wreckage,

Seagull feathers, on its granite table.

As sparrow is to pigeon, osprey

To bald eagle, is seagull equal

To this humongous species cannibal.

Was it refreshing, that meal resolving

All issues by size and power?

Or childish and awful

As television wrestling,

This glimpse it gives us of Nature’s

Embarrassing hand picking the soul

Of a seagull’s fat fishy pocket.

Kenneth Rosen of Portland is a professor of English at the University of Southern Maine and a well-traveled literary scholar. His poems have appeared in numerous books and magazines over the last four decades.