This neck, as of an old now dead chicken,
stretching across to The Gugh from Agnes;
dark patches on the body quite low down;
chitinous junk up near where the head should be.
Not the first time one’s seen a corpse shown here;
but this is the most ludicrous. Years back,
a porpoise lay dead, not quite at The Gugh.
A true body, torn open flesh, staling.
Maybe it had been stranded there, gone off
before high tide; or else had died at sea,
between the two islands perhaps; carried
lifeless right up on the new stony beach,
at a middle point from Perconger to The Cove
while their waters drained from out under it.
Oddly, the gulls did not feed long. They seemed
bewildered, standing about on wire legs,
heads tilting like angle-poise lights, hesitant;
and it decomposed; while quick fly grubs multiplied.
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UNFRAMED GRAPHICS by Lawrence Upton
42 pages; A5 paperback; colour cover
Writers Forum 978 1 84254 277 4
wfuk.org.uk/blog
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