It is a city alternately black and red, but always the same city. The people of this city are stocky, stunted in height, dark-humoured with toil, laughing, friendly, fragile and numerous as matchsticks. It is a city of railways and canals, like all cities, and canyons of brick where pigeons roost, heedless of hawks. It is a hissing, clanking city one day, a buzzing, ringing city the next, a place of riots and massacres, of carnivals, shops and trams. The streets are friendlier than the parks. In its museums old people learn about their grandchildren’s world, but cannot enter it. Its Free Trade is conducted by orchestras, its cathedral lurks in back streets, its pubs take centre stage. The universities multiply and compete, the docks are ship-less and airy, the airport has shrunk to the size of a child’s toy and the memory of thunder.

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Jo Waterworth lives in Glastonbury, UK, and is involved in groups for writing, editing and performing poetry. She is also studying part-time at Bath Spa University, now taking a third year poetry module. She has been published online and in print, and has won various poetry prizes in the UK. She blogs at Jo’swriting.

The least of three seagulls, you, the flightless one, yearning after your fellows, are the unlikeliest muse. But you have survived.

I remember my delight at this gift – three in a box, delicate in tissue – from my father. He understood me. We shared this soaring love, floating on the stiff sea breeze.

Wings were broken in my clumsy adolescence. Three became two, became one.

You were hidden away in dusty corners, in boxes or bags, out of sight. So when did you emerge? How did I find you, where have you been?

You perch on my windowsill, companion of stones, shells and crystals, gazing at the sunrise, the full moon, the garden birds, starling flocks. Survival brings its own contentment, you tell me. You are always looking up.

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Jo Waterworth lives and writes in Glastonbury, UK, where she is a mature student studying creative Writing and Ceramics at Bath Spa University. She has been published online and in print, most recently in the anthology 21 Reasons for Choosing Jeremy Corbin, and has a pamphlet with Poetry Space of Bristol. She blogs about her writing journey at Jo’swriting.