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Gulls Flying Over the Construction Site
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Like stealth bombers that are suddenly upon you—
there they are. They can’t be looking for anything useful
in this wide junkyard scattered with rocks and cement,
lifts and trucks, workers going at it with fervor
like the Egyptians of old. The gulls might simply be having
a momentary madness, flying for the sake of flying,
coming close but miraculously avoiding collisions among
themselves. We’ve done this too in our own way,
usually keeping the scurrying and any craziness planted
on the ground, doing occasional damage along with wonderful
things. The gulls don’t stay long, it’s back to the rivers
and the beaches, and I turn from the window and head
into another room, my shadow flapping on the white walls.
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Tim Suermondt is the author of five full-length collections of poems, the latest JOSEPHINE BAKER SWIMMING POOL from MadHat Press, 2019. He has published in Poetry, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, The Georgia Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Stand Magazine, december magazine, and Plume, among many others. He lives in Cambridge (MA) with his wife, the poet Pui Ying Wong.
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North of Oxford 