SEAGULLS
Seagulls standing in the rain in a parking lot at eight in the morning don’t know how ridiculous they look, nor would it ever cross their minds that it is ridiculous to stand in a parking lot at eight
in the morning in the rain. They know nothing else and, anyway, it is hard to fathom the seagull mind, the seagull fate, and even the possible joy and euphoria of the seagull life: catching tossed
French fries out of the sky, hanging weightlessly against the draft of wind engulfing the ship followed out to sea, endlessly hoping for another scrap.
IT’S ALL BLUE
The sun rose and set and was always a symbol for what had been or what was going to be. It was fleeting, but I and it kept coming back. I was a pile of free sawdust. If you saw me at all, it was
only in passing, like sun through leaf. I drove as far as I could go, beyond shadows and locks. All that remained was ocean and bird. The end of land was always a cul de sac or one way street in
the other direction. At the end of the day work was just a shadow but the sky was always there to remind me which circle was worth pursuit. Cactus grew inside of glass. Trees fell as ships waited,
and that spot we used to sit always waited to be sat. You were my sidewalk, a ball thrown into the sky, two birds on a wire or hope at a tower's base. I waited for bells to ring but bells never rang.
Sun and brick and sphere: you and I were there but not here. Even the shadows were on our side. Was it temptation or a church with three locked doors? All the mannequins were more lovely than
life itself. Look closely: it all goes away. It's all there but it's all blue. You can't hold on to what's not hold-on-able-to.
Greg Bachar is the author of The Amusement Park of the Mind, The Writing Machine, The Book of Was, The Sun Poems, Advanced Studies in the Rocket Absurd, and an Executive Producer of the Star Wars documentary “Elstree 1976”.
