Studying Seagulls

               

                              Studying Seagulls

Father and his son measure the lake’s slopping shore.
The boy suffering two steps to the man’s one,
shot-gunning questions to his father’s plaid shirt.
“Why do birds fly?  Stones skip, Daddy? Fish jump?
Waves mess up the shore with driftwood and foam
and empty clam shells?”

Over them---a seagull rides the afternoon’s air current.

“Pa, what’s that? The youngster inquires.
The obliging parent raises arms skyward.
                        (Pop! Pop!)

It is then I notice the .310 shotgun discharging,
its cigar puff of smoke from a blue-black barrel
above the polished stock. The bird    

    drops

            akin to a single

                     floundering

                                      melting

                          snowflake,

Lying broken at their booted feet.

“A seagull, son.” The father flips
the bird’s lifeless head from side-to-side
with the rifle’s barrel. “Flown all the way
from the coast probably.”

Physicists relate, the action of examining mass
changes it. Substances (indeed) may appear                           
altered:                                    close up.