Lichen roof

Lichen Roof
Peter William Redgrove (1932-2003)

It could be the ancient

and lost biscuit of life, the lichen

that never grows where the air

is polluted, the seagulls return

again and again to pluck those

bright orange fronds from the

brick-chinks, they neck and feed

and nest on the ridge-poles of the

sloping roofs, in the chimney-angles

this confection grows out of the wind,

out of a nothing, feeds on nothing,

spreads in circles like sliced fruit,

orange circular feasts,

is always availing,

the round sea-smell

which drops these beings like coinage;

they arrive invisibly in the wind,

materialize on the roofs

in round flat fortresses;

all the seagulls have one voice,

are a one person in feathered white

who miaous as he glides

down the air-streets;

in the sound I see

his fish-oil engines,

his single beak, the singular

color-of-the-lichens neb:

The solo gliders are his vocal chords,

his vocalizations and his wind-pipe,

and his spinning shit-balls

smashing across my friend's tweed cap:

a species person,

the one person

in many gulls that mountaineer the lichen pistes, scratch up

their gratis feasts.