The Gulls are Squalling

Long before dawn, I heard the lakeshore gulls squalling,

their pleas collecting into shrill rhythms,  

into three-sided echoes that split once,

split twice again as the sounds swept up through clusters of bull pine.

The arrival of spring cannot be trusted.

Four years ago, on tomorrow’s date exact,

a doctor sat between me and my wife and said

nothing, nothing, nothing

can be done.

Once, as a small boy, I held three newborn mice in the palm my hand.

The mice nearly indistinguishable from lima beans,

but soft and warm.

How could I connect them to the dirty mice scampering through my cupboards and walls?

How are these small things that?

That…that…again, at the brutal edge of spring

and only moments before the mice were taken off to be drowned.

Tomorrow spring.

Tomorrow the gulls spraying up against clouds and calling back.

Tomorrow the mice to field and the fox soon to follow.

This year’s tomorrow—hopefully—just another day.

--Mitchell Hegman