In the city of the gulls,
along with all the other pieces hatched
by gulls clamoring sunrise law,
there came you, largely a wound,

to the courtyard of brick.
Baby with a wormy wing,
thinglet never to fledge,
despite all that made those feathers grow

some calamity in the nest . . .
And during the fracturing into many
you wandered, for just a while,
juvenile on a tether of hurt.

I witnessed the meeting of you
and your weak reflection,
trembling for strength, for others
already spent, my atmosphere pulsing

with your imprint, your leavings.
It moves, I see even now, while gulls shatter
the common air with screams. Moves
as a color, a light that throbs on loose feathers

caught in the weeds that overflow the cracks,
on those cornered in a heap here
beside my shoe,
on the white spattered everywhere,

the hot brick . . . An orange-red pulse
in cities of gulls and humans
discovered through sight,
a burning through the eyes.