Gull, Fallen

The blue fishing line trails from his mouth like spit,
dark pearls of eyes peering into dunes,
his beak opening and closing around hot sand.

My son, stopped in his run,
wraps his hands around the white-white breast,
folding wiry legs into soft gray wings.

I pinch the cut line and prod his narrow
bill open with thin driftwood.
There is no blood, only the pink cartilage

of his throat that wattles in his mouth.
He does not snap at me, no matter
how hard I tug the line from side to side,

but swallows and swallows around
the pronged trinity that has snagged
his ordinary afternoon. Maybe he dived

into surf where a fish wiggled, unaware
it was already caught. Maybe the fisherman
never knew what he hooked. "A big one,"

he'll tell his friends. Broke the line clean off."
A few feet away small pipers circle,
poking crabs, and cooing. "There's nothing

we can do," my son says. "We're making it worse."
We lay him on a dune, shaded by sea grass.
His heavy head flops into sand.

That evening at dusk, we find him there still,
eyes fixed on the sea, a visitation of small tracks
wreathing his body, tide climbing in.

from Tapestry: Of Sun and Shadow, ©2007