“Though lovers be lost, love shall not;
and Death shall have no Dominion.”
Dylan Thomas
Suite Ste. Luce
5-10 / 14
5
Early morning mist:
a shadow heron
clacks its beak
at a ring of mobbing gulls.
6
When the mist clears,
heron draws
his neck into a bow
and fires
the arrow of his beak
into a fish.
The gulls run wild,
clawing up the sky
on a ladder of sound.
7
Seagull:
a coat-hanger, hanging from
a blue sky-rail,
white wings braced
against the flow of air.
8
Herring gulls hovering,
white doves
round the old man’s head;
a halo
of clacking red-ringed beaks
livid against the sky.
Brazen voiced,
these peace doves,
mewling for their daily bread.
9
Black
cormorants pinning
their wings to dry
on the wind’s
rough cross-beams.
10
The dead crab,
alive an eye blink ago:
body exit left
(with the black backed gull)
legs exeunt right
(with herring gull attendants).
Crowd scene:
a chorus
of crows-in-waiting.
rogermoorepoet 
I like the cormorants the best … Great comparison!
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I have seen them perch on the blackened harbour beams and just hang out their wings … I woud like to think that that’s where to ‘hang out’ comes from.
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Wonderful! Herons are a rare sight around here. Once every great, great while one visits the trout stream across the road from my house and we’ll catch a brief glimpse of him overhead. Lovely imagery as always, Roger!
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We get them on the coast, especially on the straits between NB and PEI. The island (PEI) is full of them and I have seen hundreds feeding in the evening light: a marvelous sight. Two of our neighbors have ornamental fish ponds in the garden, but the herons cleaned out the fish. I love them, we had one in a tree behind us the other day … but the pond people don’t like them! Ours are mainly Great Blue Herons, incidentally. There’s a lovely picture of one at the head of my Go Fish page.
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Oh, I just looked! Gorgeous! What a treat for you to have them in abundance. Sorry about the fish ponds though, that’s a bummer. Ah, well… that is the food chain!
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Just caught him as he was swallowing …
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Perfect!
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Seagull:
a coat-hanger, hanging from
a blue sky-rail,
white wings braced
against the flow of air.
Excellent! I love the amazing ways you find to describe things, Roger. I would have never thought of “coat-hanger”, but it is perfect.
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Thanks, Tanya. Great for coats and for sea-gulls. It’s that gull-wing effect. This set is from a much earlier sequence, but it seemed to fit well into the themes of TLBL. The heron in the mist, surrounded by a mob of sea-gulls, was incredible. We could hear him, but couldn’t see him. Then suddenly the mist thinned and there he was …
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I love watching those birds…
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