‘Raucous gleaners’

Lesser black-backed gulls in a feeding frenzy.

— Photo by Someone35

“Bedraggled feathers like bonnets

that would fly off if they weren’t strapped,

kazoo-voiced, a chorus of crying dolphins

or rusty sirens a speck of dust could set off?

these raucous gleaners milling around….’’

— From “Gulls in Wind,’’ by Betsy Sholl (born 1945). A former Maine poet laureate, she lives in Portland.

Here’s the whole poem.

1906 postcard. The square was named after Portland native Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), for a time America’s most popular poet.