Many have asked me to elucidate a little on the meaning and origins of The Sea-Bird, my recently completed epic poem - epic in scope, not in length (epic-length poetry has no place on this blog. It would go in my hidden poetry blog). And so I shall.
Well, you may not believe this, but dude! I just thought that whole thing up off the top of my head! Oh yeah, I worked on it some afterwards, fine-tuning it. But mostly I just came up with it on the drive home from work! It was bothering me half the way home, composing itself into ungainly couplets and marching along from the back to the front to the side of my mind unwanted, even as the backed-up traffic slogged its unruly way along the back roads by the coast. In fact, if I hadn't taken that particular route, I would never have come up with the poem at all!
Fate does indeed take a hand in matters of inspiration, it seems. And posterity is the richer for it! Because, as I was headed up the hill by the river - man! it was windy! - I saw this big damn bird who was all coasting along for like minutes not even bothering to flap, barely just above the water surface! And then suddenly he faltered, and flailed around for a second, and then dude - he got DUNKED. Took a big ol' belly-flop.
Served his lazy ass right if you ask me. Should have put more effort into it.
Anyhow, I took a little poetic license in changing the gender of the sea-bird from a he to a she. Seemed more picturesque somehow, less automatic. But apart from that, it pretty much unfolded as I told it. Like a sweet photograph in words, of that big ol' dumb wet bird getting dunked!
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