Interesting questions, B.
"Maybe" - it needs something, I feel, to qualify what I have already said.
"Sometimes" allows one not to always see it, but doesn't really cover
seeing gulls in other situations. They're not all in fishing lines though a
hell of a lot are. It seems to typify their situation. They pay a high
price or scavenging on us. I don't know that the end life of those not in
towns and cities is any more dignified or pleasant etc; but I do find it
affecting to see them caught up, especially as they're often not greatly
enmeshed - but you can't help them without being attacked. And they can't
work itout.
But I ramble...
I wanted to give a hint of other possibilities; and I didn't want to say
"for example" (retrospective comment) + a sense of thinking and speaking it
out at the same time, in process; as if I were speaking indicatively of
something you could see as we came out on the start of the shore
"it's" was written to refer to the gull(s)... if you think of the poem as
a colloquial monologue; and I suppose I wanted it to be like that - as I
said just now - then that'd work, I think; but I see that viewing the whole
as more rhetorical than colloquial (and of course it is, the colloquiality
is rhetorical!) then it could refer to the moon
And that could work, if you shove it hard enough, driving the screw in with
a hammer: gulls as chunks from an avalanche (of gulls)....
I think some of the stuff I was saying about the motion of the moon would
fit gulls quite nicely; but I didn't consciously think of that
Ta for that
Time for a shower and then out into the day. 3 or 4 hours of it gone already
L
On 13 May 2015 at 08:30, Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Hi L.
>
> Like the sense of observed life in decay here. Couple of things: do you
> need 'maybe' to finish line 3? And to what does 'it's' refer in line 7? The
> moon? The gull? Last three lines full of engaging entanglements.
>
> B
>
>
> > On 13 May 2015, at 4:19 pm, Lawrence Upton <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
> >
> > you'll see sometimes an old or infirm gull,
> >
> > a bit grubby, long since less than ebullient,
> >
> > limping in a length of fishing line maybe --
> >
> >
> > that's how their seasons end, rapidly slowing
> >
> > towards the speed of stone; still in motion;
> >
> >
> > the swaying moon glides on, turning, vacuous;
> >
> >
> > it's a hobbled chunk of an avalanche
> >
> > banging towards the big emptiness, opening
> >
> > it for rock to fly in tethering circles
> >
> >
> > of curves; parabolas; and springs of straightness
> >
> > through meshwork of nested slingshots; tangled?
> >
>
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