Gull Chicks

East Kent, 4 July 2017

Fluffy, speckled, gull chicks

Hide shyly under ledges

On my neighbours’ roofs

Each year in this season.

Their dapper nesting parents

In waistcoats white as surf foam

Break off jocose chattering

To harry meddling humans.

Not for them chalk cliffs

With wind-ruffled sea views

It’s the Georgian aesthetic

That, and distant steeples.

We too make nests of houses

And raise our wide-eyed chicks

They take their due and leave us

Like unfledged, flightless birds.