Gannets have gone berserk for feeding –
dive wildly, steadying wings half-spread
until the instant they slice surface.
It is aerial mayhem, free-for-all,
each makes hay while its sun shines,
combined they pin the shoal against the bluff.
Off the long beach south of Byron,
wet-suited surfers speckled near the point,
scores of sea birds plunder teeming bait.
First the terns, small bodied, dark faced,
their wingtips on the downstroke almost
touching in swift unstudied elegance,
and when we walk back an hour later,
the gannets, bigger, have ejected them;
more daredevil even than the terns.
Three plummet from the whirling,
break-neck through the wave-face,
three pagan godlings on the pillage
who maraud without forethought,
murder without malice,
and die leaving nothing undone.
Constellations 