# The Seagulls And The Sea

By Peter Howitt, 5 June 2024.
Web page: https://compossible.blog/2024/06/05/the-seagulls-and-the-sea/
Licence: CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

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Shall I regurgitate those tired old tropes?

Barbary apes, Rule Britannia

Mottled Utrechtian paper

With the keen eye of a British expatriate

For the bleeding obvious

* * *

Yet, when I see Gibraltar my heart swells

Not just with

Tales of past victories, sieges endured,

Ramparts withstanding, bastions defended

Or something half remembered

Of Lord Nelson, John Lennon

* * *

Not only with Joyce’s beautiful song:

“ _O and the sea, the sea crimson sometimes like fire,_

_and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens;_ ”

Or the Moorish castle

Neanderthal caves and Sandy Bay

… I think of seagulls circling under the sun

To a bird, experts on their prehistoric treaty

Proudly warning

_huoh-huoh-huohing_

With every strut and squawk declaring

_This is mine, my home_

_You will not make me leave_

* * *

Daring dogfighters

of rapacious raptors

The squalling squadrons

Take flight to fight

And yet again gain

Winged victory

* * *

Of course I think of the apes, our history

This extraordinary community

But more often than not I think of

seagulls and the sea

…The little space

You made on the Rock

For migratory birds

Like my family; me.

* * *

![post image](https://img.paragraph.com/cdn-cgi/image/format=auto,width=3840,quality=85/https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/1efc88f8606bb788d3b06886c5630375.png)The Seagulls and the Sea, AI generated image

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