-- for a friend who died
from my unpublished collection
It takes some time. The seagull doesn’t have hands with which to tear the thing apart. It relies on toss and shake, doesn’t have the teeth to do it. And it's attention span’s not good. It tears off a leg, and munches on it some, and considers other things. The crayfish writhes. It’s on its back, and would no doubt rather leave, but it's hard to tell how much of that is pain, what’s reflex, what’s instinct just to hide, or so we’d like to think. The seagull picks at the crayfish some more. This time, nothing tears loose. It walks away, and stops, and hurries back as if it has the answer figured out: shake and toss. Consider the seaweed in the surf, old friend. They toil not, nor do they grieve.
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First published in AGNI
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images and text © by Alpay Ulku
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