spinning a shroud for a seagull…part I

Ibb, do you want a seagull? Mum just found him on the road.

My friend’s farm is 10 minutes from here. It’s one of those daffodil and sun spring days and when I arrive you are brought from the barn wrapped in an old feed bag. Her children run from the house, splay your paddled toes, spread your wings, point out the bright red spot on your bill. ‘He might have babies’ they say and although it’s too early I don’t want to think about them waiting, calling. You are so nearly perfect. And yet I go on to learn that your insides were outside, that the dark stain on the underside of your tail is evidence of your fate. Your mate had fared worse (or maybe better): her bones and blood and feathers a grated mess on the tarmac. I wrap you back in the feed bag. Place you next to me on the front seat. “You will look after him?’ my friend’s son asks solemnly. I’ll do my best, I promise.

At home I put you gently on the table in the studio, incongruous amongst the bottles of oil and jars of pigment. I stroke your feathers, your wings are rigid now. Are you one of the crew who have greened the old asbestos roof by the bus stop in town? Who I watch in the raucous dusk when I collect the children? Your eyes are half closed, but their yellow ring is vivid still. I’d not really realised the size of a herring gull. It’s hard to imagine that the driver, on a slow urban street, might not have seen you. I wonder if they were unable to swerve. Or (and I hate to think it) just how hard they’d tried to miss. Maybe childhood memories of stolen ice creams? Or just a lifetime narrative of pests and vermin, irony lost as you were killed feasting on chips thrown from a passing car. Huge wings and a primeval cry you have rapidly adjusted your life to accommodate ours. We curse you for the speed of your adaptations, and yet I hope to someone’s god we will be as quick with ours in the decades to come.

I swap the feed bag for a cleaner one. I’m sorry for your sojourn in the freezer, but you’ll have to be patient - a shroud will take a while, I’ve never made one this big before. ..