Keri Finlayson

 

Gulls

We know them don't we
Gulls.
Solid bodied, white. The beak a split scream.
Yelping us up a storm or a turned tip.
Seeding our sky like weeds.
They are not souls or prayers
But whole cathedrals of rage.
Feathered vaults, gathering all known sound and pitching it as noise
Against the false horizon.

Our bodies are inadequately boned for such wrath.
Richly dense they lack the cavities for height.
We open our mouths and bleed long strands of gravity.
Our speech being the opposite of flight.

 

 

Copyright © 2008, Keri Finlayson.

Keri Finlayson was born and raised in Cornwall, but now lives in Swansea, where she was the recipient of an Academi Writers' Bursary. Her poetry has previously appeared in Poetry Wales and Poetry Cornwall, and a first collection, Rooms, appeared from Shearsman Books in May 2009.