When A Seagull Says Hello

Photo by Olivia Kalachurska.

Photo by Olivia Kalachurska.

Frequent File 770 contributor James H. Burns recently marked one more summer, in “When a Seagull Says Hello” for the LI Herald, which includes at least one science fictional encounter, as well a nearly enchanted meeting with two swans…

When a seagull says hello, one should probably pay attention — that is, immediately after you’ve smiled…

…It was not difficult then, as in all the years since, to see myself as a boy, even in my pre-elementary school age, my mother reading to me, from Dr. Seuss, sitting on our blankets…or sensing the taste of instant iced tea, poured past the ice cubes, from a plastic container into our plastic mugs. I was seeing exactly the same sights I would have seen in the late 1960s, and these sands, had only known my happiness…

…As the seagull swooped and soared and paused in passing, hovering some feet above my head, I realized that his “greeting” was an avian call I had never heard before; even after a lifetime by different oceans, hearing caws, and squawks, and hoots and howls. I couldn’t help myself, however, after his second salutation, from saying, “Hello, my friend.

And then the gull burst into what most assuredly sounded like laughter (as who would not, to see such fun?)….

 

Photo by Olivia Kalachurska.

Photo by Olivia Kalachurska.