an Egg a Day Four

Black Headed Gull, 2001, colour print, 24 x 20 in

I saw one once, tracing an arctic circle, a rarity,

Another entry for the list I do not kep.

Funny thing, its head was not black at all,

but brown, which is how you know it is not

Laughing, Sabine’s, nor Bonaparte’s all black-headed.

Once I hurdled the literal, I liked the irony

of describing a thing for what it is not.

For once, science takes a flier.

Look, look there! ‘What?’ A black-headed gull!

‘Where?’ See! ‘Which one?’ The one with the black cap.

Photograph by Thaddeus Holownia. Poem by Harry Thurston. 

From the catalogue Ova Aves published by Anchorage Press, 2011