Most gulls don’t bother to learn more than the simple facts of flight –
how to get from shore to food and back.
For most gulls, it is not flying that matters, but eating.
For this gull though, it was not eating that mattered, but flying.
More than anything else, Jonathan Livingston Seagull loved to fly.
– Richard Bach
A poet as beachcomber walks the beach, sometimes with pen and paper,
gathering sights and sounds, shells and stones, scents and seagull scenes.
Yet it is not always about the waves and wind, for the sea carries the stories of the world;
how it connects and disconnects, how it gives and takes, reveals how we treat it. Humanity is always present in its deep moans and its dance of exaltation. When you listen, the ocean has much to say. Pick up Beachcomber and, like Jonathan Livingston Seagull, these poems will take you flying.
Colleen Keating is a Sydney poet. Her
poetry explores the paradox and wonder
of nature, the realities of life, of inequality,
injustice and the increasing threat to our
environment. This is her sixth collection of
poetry. For Colleen, poetry is vocational.
I not so much choose it as my medium
of expression as much as it chooses me.
Awareness, mindfulness and an unperishing
sense of wonder are my guides.