gull

flock

There is no resolution in the fugue.

                                    Mark Doty

                                    Grosse Fuge

How many per acre, strung from poles, some

in the middle, some along the cliff-

line?  Gulls on a lead rope, dead

except in a wind or breeze.  They rot

above the blossoms and then ripening blue-

berries, like an olfactory thought going on 

and on and on to their brothers who'll

come to strip the fields and barrens

of every berry Alvaro's meant to

rake and take to town.  Decorating

the acres, does killing a gull and knotting

her orange leg make of her an oracle to rake

under, to take its place within the clarion of wind

instruments?  And what must it

look like from the sky or smell like,

carcass-rot of blood blackening stench,

of heavy salt--from on bottom

it will be ribs wide open like they were

in the yard, like they were when they were being

 riveted and  hammered 

within the shell enveloping the albumen

and the skin of keratin firming pale

and once its use is through

thrown to the cove 

-opening at the turn of the tide going

from high on out.  Watch.  The gull

will float for a while and for a while

it will soak itself in 

the fog or the sun or what-all weather

and soon enough it will sink

when its full, of itself, of one

or two or a whole slew of the coveted

blueberries or adult gulls it gorged

itself on at the end of last winter and all

the smorgasbord of chicks it sent off when it was 

living and now, when when it is dead.