The Airport Gulls

The gulls patrolling the tarmac at the Newark Airport
make me sad.
I have just left you behind, so sadness
inhabits the unlikeliest things.
But these in particular, the white gulls,
for they are home, with a nest in the stones nearby.
Yet with their slender wings they try the great Atlantic,
daring, skirting,
riding the rim of whatever tempest
rules the sea’s heart.
But home, as I say, wing to familiar wing
when the half moon bends the sphere of water.

I knew I would miss you when I shut the door,
but that the white seabirds
and the complicated coast
and the planes soaring outward (oh, ever outward)
should compose your form in steel and water,
that I did not see coming.
Victory to you. Rule our dent in the stones till I wing home.