While a thick fog prowled in
on the already shortened
autumn evening, I watched a gull,

lovely, and white enough to still
see, glide vaunted above us
walking hurriedly inland.

Then he lifted, barely rowing
his disappearing wings, and turned
toward a wholly blind vastness that I

was afraid to even imagine.
Not to make gulls sound anything like
paragons of virtue—I know all too well

how they commandeer picnics—
but I’ve since learned amazing
facts about their ability to predict

storms, their having high IQs,
and UV and binocular vision, that they
sometimes study human eye direction

to plan their own next move.
Yet this thundering swell to cross was no
narrow ribbon of oxbow to be doubled back

through, so I wondered, as we ourselves
had begun thinking of dinner, whether
a succulent memory was driving him

to distraction, or if it were some
unseen siren-singing that had to be
answered before the weather cleared.

Though mostly, what I wondered
was why something not made in God’s
image should have more heart than me.    

Claude Wilkinson is a critic, essayist, painter, and poet. His most recent poetry collections are World without End and Soon Done with the Crosses. He received the Whiting Award for Poetry in 2000.