A seagull shrugs and rattles a fake laugh, and I know just what he means. It’s high tide, by which I mean the shops are boarded up and the hoses are sandbagged against the Biblical. Neither the seagull nor I believe in God, but there’s no denying there’s something wrathful in the wind, and that if this were a Testament it would be Old. It’s election day, and we need to place our crosses beside one of the wolves that we are told lives inside us, but their manifestos are word-for-word identical, and we know that once the other’s eliminated, we’ll be next on the winner’s menu. The seagull tilts his head like a quizzical Buster Keaton, baleful and adrift in the waves of the world. I’d suggest flight, but I know our sense of duty would preclude such abnegation, so we wade to the booths in the last arcade still open, where, amidst the clang and clash of shuddering pinball machines, our choices will dissolve on damp paper beneath stubby pencils.
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Oz Hardwick
Picture William R. Beebe
https://www.williamrbeebe.com/journal/2018/5/23/shore-bound-painting-a-seagull-in-flight
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