The Gulls Maw

A raw red crater of hunger; the clacking tongue a buckram spear shaken at all comers. The gulls mouth is the gull, the gullet is the gull the torso, the snowy pale blue plumage, that dark under-feathering all the body of the bird a perfect bow for the arrowing beak and its raucous bugle. A neck stretched for greed; above that gorge, hard-set and avaricious, glint eyes long allied to savage seas. The bird has the primal scream of a scavenger, the gall of the harassing hunter - and yet is admirable, sleekly beautiful, often graceful, until, rigid jaws agape we regard its wide-open craw, wince as those shears clamp down on some still wriggling shred.