"After the Gulls" by Jo Bear from SHŌ POETRY JOURNAL

Today's poem is by Jo Bear

After the Gulls

It began at the shore, foam
feathering as each flock
descended & scouted
the pitch of a roof
or the slink of cables
not built to hold a body
but learning new forms.
When they rose, every sky
was licked with cloud
& the town cowered
from the new weather
of the world. After the rain
that was their bodies, they laid
the town bare to taste
what had been withheld
from their tongues & to know
how to place their young
at the living end of law.
The town had never
considered how breakable
flight renders a body
until the children
could no longer eat outside.
The people begged the country
for permission to cull
the squall of sleeplessness
before the town too
became theirs & the country,
believing itself the arbiter
of fate, allowed it—there
the skewered wing, there a sickle
beak open to its last offering—
old hands making silent work
of that unwelcome noise.
In the quiet, the children
wondered about origins.
What beast had they fled?
What hunger? Between bites
of crisps, the children made
avian their sharp curiosity
& flew to the shore to practice
resurrection & were so far
from what had been done
in their name. Below them,
the water tuned its lyre,
readied itself to catch
whatever floated, whatever fell.

Copyright © 2025 Jo Bear All rights reserved
from Shō Poetry Journal
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission

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