Seagulls and the sea

Shall I regurgitate

those tired old tropes?

Barbary apes, Rule Britannia

Mottled Utrechtian paper

With the keen eye of a British expatriate

For the bleeding obvious

Yet, when I see Gibraltar my heart swells

Not just with

Tales of past victories, sieges endured,

Ramparts withstanding, bastions defended

Or something half remembered

Of Lord Nelson, John Lennon

Not only with Joyce’s beautiful song

“O and the sea, the sea crimson sometimes like fire,

and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens;”

Or the Moorish castle

Neanderthal caves and Sandy Bay

… I think of seagulls circling under the sun

To a bird, experts of their prehistoric Treaty

Proudly warning

huoh-huoh-huohing

With every strut and squawk declaring

This is mine, my home

You will not make me leave

Daring dogfighters

‘gainst rapacious raptors

The streaming squalling squadrons

Take flight to fight

And yet again gain

Winged victory

Of course I think of the apes, our history

This extraordinary community

But more often than not I think of

seagulls and the sea

…The little space

You made on the Rock

For migratory birds

Like my family; me.