Studying Seagulls
Studying Seagulls
Father and his son measure the lake’s slopping shore.
The boy suffering two steps to the man’s one,
shot-gunning questions to his father’s plaid shirt.
“Why do birds fly? Stones skip, Daddy? Fish jump?
Waves mess up the shore with driftwood and foam
and empty clam shells?”
Over them—a seagull rides the afternoon’s air current.
“Pa, what’s that? The youngster inquires.
The obliging parent raises arms skyward.
(Pop! Pop!)
It is then I notice the .310 shotgun discharging,
its cigar puff of smoke from a blue-black barrel
above the polished stock. The bird
drops
akin to a single
floundering
melting
snowflake,
Lying broken at their booted feet.
“A seagull, son.” The father flips
the bird’s lifeless head from side-to-side
with the rifle’s barrel. “Flown all the way
from the coast probably.”
Physicists relate, the action of examining mass
changes it. Substances (indeed) may appear
altered: close up.