A poem by Peter Reading
AT MARSDEN BAY
Arid hot desert stretched here in the early Permian Period—sand dune fossils are pressed to a brownish bottom stratum. A tropical saline ocean next silted calcium and magnesium carbonates over this bed, forming rough Magnesian Limestone cliffs on the ledges of which Rissa tridactyla colonizes— an estimated four thousand pairs that shuttle like close-packed tracer bullets against dark sky between nests and North Sea. The call is a shrill “kit-e-wayke, kit-e-wayke”, also a low “uk-uk-uk” and a plaintive “ee-e-e-eeh, ee-e-e-eeh”.
Four boys about sixteen years old appear in Army Stores combat-jackets, one wearing a Balaclava with a long narrow eye-slit (such as a rapist might find advantageous), bleached denims rolled up to mid calf, tall laced boots with bright polished toe-caps, pates cropped to stubble. Three of the four are crosseyed, all are acned. Communication consists of bellowing simian ululations between each other at only a few inches range: “Gibbo, gerrofforal getcher yaffuga”, also a low “lookadembastabirdsmon”.
Gibbo grubs up a Magnesian Limestone chunk and assails the ledges at random, biffing an incubating kittiwake full in the sternum—an audible slap. Wings facing the wrong way, it thumps at the cliff base, twitching, half closing an eye. Gibbo seizes a black webbed foot and swings the lump joyously round and round his head. It emits a strange wheezing noise. Gibbo’s pustular pal is smacked in the face by the flung poultry, yowls, and lobs it out into the foam. The four gambol euphoric like drunk chimps through rock pools. Nests are dislodged, brown-blotched shells crepitate exuding thick rich orange embryo goo under a hail of hurled fossilized desert two hundred and eighty million years old.
Peter Reading (1946-2011)
Image: Gulls nesting on the cliff in Marsden Bay (© Steve Daniels)
