Dignity

The Seagulls used to be Angels according to a Nordic legend that I probably don't understand.

They have become this way, it seems, because we simply, slowly forgot about them.

& as I stand outside in the warm night smoking, I can hear them squawking a seething, teeming mass of white feathers

& cold hard beaks poking at discarded styrofoam chip boxes, ketchup packets & chicken bones:

all the detritus out here by the coast in one of so many forgotten towns…

The thought that these strangely mechanical seeming beasts could once have been our sublime idols seems oddly appropriate:

Now that we have desire as disposable convenience what need do we have for the Magnificat;

for prayer or pilgrimage, supplication, meditation & incense or any attempt, no matter how naive to transcend the brutish fact of materiality; existence & mortality?

So the seagulls scrabble among our waste like avian beggars, safe only because wings bring freedom, & ignored or else quietly despised by the normal & respectably employed,

like the homeless people who hide & die behind the houses & in the filthy streets.

Dignity is denied to the forgotten.