gulls overhead by Dean Schabner

riding waves almost too big, thunderous, and all disorganized, storm passing far out on the ocean and wind here, raising swarms of stinging sand, only the gulls, all kinds and indifferent to their differences, seem -- on spread wings -- somehow gentle

overhead the gulls

don't care much it seems about

what I’m doing here

wind blows sand everywhere

and sun    just another gull

overhead gulls turn

their heads side to side as they

hang curiously

in blue air      shouldn't I then

give them something to laugh at

overhead gulls fly

bodily in air blue as

imagination

I've no feathers   no wings

but watch them that I might learn

overhead the gulls

understand it's clear something

about which I can't

know    or so I thought before

listening to their laughter

gulls float overhead

in windbrightened blue    waves rise

summer's wildest peaks

let them lift me     I'll never

be closer to gulls' laughter

---

Dean Schabner lives on the shore of Jamaica Bay in the Rockaways of New York City. He has a chapbook of poems, "surf-body," out from Ghost City Press, and has had poems and stories appear in Juniper, River Heron Review, Witness, First Literary Review-East, Northwest Review, Pushcart Prize and others.