ACCELERATED GULL
By day he sells insurance
from a building near the wharf
but dreams now every night
of transformation, of becoming
an elegant white gull
but one which has enough acceleration,
harboured deep within each three-foot wing,
to rise and rise
and soar through thinning air,
to burst out into nothing
and to know for several seconds
until his breathing ends
just what its like to leave the grip of Earth,
to float there free, in silence,
to watch the spinning world beneath his feet,
to see at last the continents and oceans
and what his garden looks like from above.
Trevor Hewett
