The grace and love of the Gannet

I picked up this 2008 poetry pamphlet, by Donald S Murray, when we were recently up on Shetland ...

... this is the opening poem from within, which so well captures the grace, love and sheer beauty of flying gannets:


How to become a gannet

Greed's not a requirement
whatever humankind might say.
Instead, what's needed is the grace
that sets them through the paces of some high-blown ballet,
where heaven sets the stage
as they perform the pas de bas and pirouette
above the ceaseless backdrop of the waves.

Or love, too, that makes them greet
returning partners with caress
of beaks, waltz of neck and wing
stretching for its highlight in a kiss,
touch and peck that might
spark fire through snow-white plumage
within the blaze of night.

All gifts that we might envy,
stranded men on earth,
eyes fixed on firmament, observing flight
and noting too, both scarcity and dearth
of such graces in our own lives,
till we pray we might become gannets,
our spirits lifting like their wings, so light and bright and lithe.

---

Donald S Murray (1956 - )

---