Spark
I hate seagulls
but let me tell you this
when this one banked in the colossal shadow
of the high-rise
it had all the slide guitar in the world behind it.
A wonderful thing,
the not-so-green grass and the long
river sound
and even the old merciless Sun
let the air string a breeze through it.
Lately, I am uneasy.
Here, I declare my love for everything
all because of the gull.
The swine, the dirty rotten bastard.
I still hate them
but I'll give it to that one,
it was fair what it did with
the shadow
where the water had no mirror to catch it.
About this poem
This poem was included in Best Scottish Poems 2023. Best Scottish Poems is an online publication, consisting of 20 poems chosen by a different editor each year, with comments by the editor and poets. It provides a personal overview of a year of Scottish poetry. The editor for 2023 was Aoife Lyall.
Editor’s Comments:
The poem opens with an air of joyful confession, a reluctant wonder giving way to ardent respect; acknowledgement of skill that flies in the face of private and public opinion. The final line of that first stanza “it had all the slide guitar in the world behind it” is a delicious revelation, bestowing as it does the greatest compliment the speaker can think to give this awe-inspiring nuisance.
The speaker’s performative bravado gives way to a tough tenderness, a sense that, while the change is not wholly unwanted, it is not wholly welcome either: “I declare my love for everything / all because of the gull. / The swine”.
Author’s Comments:
I wrote this poem down at the Clyde after a long day in the warehouse, on the patch of grass just before the Squinty Bridge. Waiting for my partner finishing work, Ry Cooder in the earphones, and then came the gull swooping. Anxious times to be living in. Hellish, even. And you’re just supposed to keep going through it all. But there it was, moving so elegantly, and all of that fell away for a moment. There was a quiet beauty in it. I was very grateful to be alive to see it. It’s the small things that keep us going. So the poem was written to say ‘Thank you’ to the gull, for reminding me.
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David Ross Linklater
David Ross Linklater is a poet from Balintore, Easter Ross. He is the author of four pamphlets, most recently Star Muck Bourach (Wish Fulfillment Press, 2022).