Poetry

Inland Gulls

They came, a few at a time, to forage
the streets of the Six Towns, far
far from the thump and wash of the shores
that make sense of their feathers

Their clamour and shriek and old salt songs
reminding of Potter’s Weeks spent
in Llandudno, and Rhyl, still
briny and warm in the memory

Then, in their swelling tides, to fish
the corporation rubbish tips
piercing the fetid air with their
 anxious, aching, lingering cries

And now on Mow, as tractors trawl
the autumn fields, they wheel and scream
drop and dab in the wake of the plough
as the coulter flashes, silver, in the brown rolling earth.

 W. Terry Fox

Cheshire Poet Laureate