Seagulls [1] Poem by Gert Strydom

Seagulls are flying from edge tot edge,
their screeching voices call the veldt, the sky the sea
of South Africa stretching east and west
to a carnivorous hunt above the ridges, sea ditches
and small crabs, whose lives are spent in shell crevices, yield
splashing blood, ooze from their guts, their veins with

a little nucleus of skeleton. It was when I walked
facing the sea at its east end with a kind of dredge
of sprinkling sand, strolled through the lathering water
naked legged in the winter water, with a member as bait
under cast moon with rocks itching and scratching my feet

after I saw in my rising eyes the stretches, flattening
of this one land, a country stretching east to west,
(as if no other exists anywhere else)
south to north, wherever I were going
with hillocks, mountains, flashing city lights,
even trees looking somewhat blatantly
as if staring at me with cold winter bitterness.

I know that the sun still turns, until the next day
and the morning will visit as owls or rats to us
in hues of brilliant blue, only in the Cape it will be grey
and I know that day and night the seagulls fly over me
or we or us with wings covering South Africa, the whole
the continent of Africa, even the whole wide world
and their screeching will last until eternity.

[Reference: Owls by Leslie Norris.]