On my way to buy a morning paper #85

Squealing of gulls
winding of well-handles
needing oiled.

Keep fooling me

Long-dead apples
shrivelled and brown
cling to bare branches -
chilly winter birds.

On my way to buy a morning paper #65

A flock of seagulls, by the sound of it;
only four in actuality.
(Wasn't there a group called that?)

Stromness, walking into town

Starlings: starry, mobile Pointillists;
several sequences of horizontal steps
in honeycomb sandstone.

Grey beads on brown

Birds like beads on the ends of up-turned braids
scatter in an instant, circle and resettle
at the sound of some invisible alarm.