This past summer I had a week's vacation by the sea, in Seaside, Oregon. I love the ocean, and took long walks every day, along the beach. It was with some amusement that I noticed a seagull flying by a kite in the shape of a shark on afternoon, and this immediately fired up my imagination. I could not help but wonder how a seagull felt about encountering a flying shark. In the seagull's world, birds occupy air, and sharks occupy water. Encountering a flying shark may have seemed like some kind of seagull apocalypse!
When I got back to the vacation home where I was staying, I wrote the following "just for fun" poem:
What the Seagull Saw
© 2014 Avril VanderMerwe
A grinning shark
dips and dives
In the breeze –
a fish
Out of water
with strings attached
No wings
What have things
come to
When skies fill
with sharks
That fly?
And what next?
Will gulls grow
gills and sink
To unspeakable
depths?
