The Coastal Gulls

“The Coastal Gulls”
By: Joseph Michael Webb
October 30, 2009

Gulls fly steadily south along the shoreline just outside of town
while we threw pieces of bread into the air from the wooden deck.
We stood just above the massive sand dunes that line the beach,
yards away from where the murky waters crash their gentle swells.

The opportunistic seagulls sing a dull song of confusion and distrust
as they cautiously pick crumbs from the breeze above our heads.
The expansive pier a quarter mile south of our vacation beach home
was an enduring and stark reminder of the resilience of this world.

While the gulls pick pieces of bread from my hands, I begin to stare.
I look intently at the aging pier, wondering what it has seen in it’s time.
The structure itself was maturing and showing signs of deterioration,
just as all things in this lonesome world eventually succumb to with time.

Forgetting about the birds entirely, I quietly walk onto the sands of the shore.
The sky was a deep shade of blue as if capturing my deepest dreams.
The breeze was a smooth touch that caresses my face, effacing clear all doubt,
and before me I see the pier; as though I realize something truly great

Images of time and words of wisdom and beauty encircle my head.
They dash faster and more stunningly as the seconds progress.
With this thrill, the realization becomes clear within my inconsequential mind.
All life comes to an ultimate and timely end—these gulls, my siblings, and myself.

Like the declining pier before my wide-eyes, those around me won’t always persist.
With bashing storms and time’s moving hand, this ‘resilient’ pier will be destroyed.
Everyone I love and ever will love will also slowly decline into nothingness.
In this way, timely death and unspeakable beauty are forever entwined.

Without the conception of death’s hungry nature, the world is a pallid place.
Just as with all things in nature, magnificence slowly turns to bareness,
revealing the rise to more splendor and grace as the clock moves forward.
We rarely address that without this rotation of death, renewal is unattainable.

Sitting down in the pure, dry sands of the seaside, I am awakened by laughter
escaping my siblings’ mouths like hot breath into a bitter winter’s night.
I look back to them and casually send a somber smile to the joyful ones
in the realization that even this must pass with time’s ultimate chime.