A Seagull Family Christmas Poem by Phil Lucas

Their salty cliffside rock home
is adorned
with a good sized branch,
brought home by father’s beak
and decorated
with stolen tourist treats.
A little wooden fisherman
sits on top.

Mother seagull
gets into a flap
when thinking of all the fresh fish gifts
she must wrap and deliver,
but outside
there is knocking on a granite door.
Young carol chirpers
are barking for a herring.

At midnight
it is tradition
for all gulls
to collect en masse
for mass.
They squawk age old rhymes
in honour of a mystical bird
who died to save them all.

There is seagull Santa
who wraps himself
in an old red plastic bag
and leaves sand eels for the young
in webbed foot stockings.

Grey mottled babies
lie awake at night
black eyes in wide awe
for the morning
when
nestled up with parents
they open fishy gifts.

I think at 3pm
they gather on the strand
to hear
the ocean give her Christmas speech.