Wherever I've seen a sea gull I've seen a sea. A beach with sand for walking, And water free For us to bathe in when we choose Or to wade in without our shoes.
But there are miles of brown earth Where never water shows, And those are places to avoid, As every sea gull knows.
A sea gull is a simple soul. No map has he. How does a sea gull ever find The sea?
Mary Carolyn Davies starts from a small, everyday observation: wherever the speaker has spotted a sea gull, a sea has been nearby. The first stanza fills in the picture with simple pleasures, sand to walk on and water to splash in, barefoot if you like. Then the poem turns to the opposite kind of place, miles of dry brown earth, which the gulls steer clear of. The speaker takes this as common knowledge among gulls, something they just know.
The last stanza is where the wonder sits. The speaker calls the gull "a simple soul" with "no map," and that's what makes the puzzle so good: how does a creature with no tools and no plans always end up at the water? The poem never answers. Instead the question hangs in a short final line, just "The sea?" The mood is light, curious, and a little awestruck, like someone who has noticed something ordinary and found it quietly amazing.