The Laughing Gull

​Catching
Wingblades
In dark sharp slices
Through grey glass eyes
Her swift flash reflections
On my dark glasses
     (woefully unnecessary today, when the moist covers the islands,
      the ferry miserably dragging  along beneath a muzzy wet blanket)
Worn as a talisman
Against
Against
And her laughing
Cries
Follow me
Undeterred by my scowl
An ugly purse of the lips
Realized too late (always too late)
That glass glare
Behind its ten dollar drugstore
Forcefield
I stand
Coiled
All nerve and sinew
She
Flips and
Rolls in my wake
Calling calling and
…familiar
That last burble of home
Fully sounding from her breast
For that last
I wake
Beneath the permanently wrinkled brow I carry
Heavy
The lizard brain
The bird
The cat the wolf
The starstuff Sagan kept on about
The child time
When I was wild and
Feral and
Light and
Lithe and
Those wingblades and
Laughing
Laughing
Laughing
Cries
Were mine
And life was all the sky
The ocean
Folding
Dropping for the thrill
Instead of folding
Dropping
Dropping
Dropping…instead of
Now
And I snap back to myself
Held in double exposure
As the world
Rights itself
The ferry
Misjudging the current
Slams home
And she is gone
And I step off the boat
Onto another island
​     7.27.17
     © Autumn Kioti 2017
     all content sole property of the artist; no content may be reproduced without artist's express permission

Laughing gull from beneath