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.
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