Birds and People

                                                    

When I see a gull,

Its eye hard,

                          Grey,

                                      Cold,

                                                  Still,

Its greedy beak slashing

Into rubbish sacks,

Its military feet pounding the grass

To make the poor worms rise,

I whisper that birds come lovelier in groups:

 

A flock of seagulls wheeling above the beach,

Their cry telling us to rejoice

In sky wide open, endless,

Their wings glinting sunlight;

A skein of starlings hovering like gnats

Ethereal in sunset above

The West Pier,

A delicate pouch of speckles.

 

And again I whisper

 

With people it’s the other way round:

We come lovelier singly:

A man walks on the beach; 

A child looks up at the fading sky,

 

Astonished;

Octogenarian pumps his stick, rising

From promenade bench.

 

Put them in a crowd –

They’re ugly predators.

Put them in a crowd

And they march,

                                 Destroy.