Seagull Joe tells of Termoli, a seaside town in a small region, Molise, which does not exist!
My name is Joe and I am an old seagull, a little tired but, still, I do not stop dreaming that many things can change…. for the better. Born in Puglia, for 30 years, happy, with my partner, we have chosen to live in a land – Molise – which, even today, many people say does not exist. Strange but true!
And just in a very beautiful part of this land “that does not exist” (intrinsic paradox!), exactly in Termoli my two seagulls were born who, now, live one in Bologna and the other one in Ravenna, two cities in the North of Italy, very rich but with a more unfavorable climate; this gives me a bit of nostalgia because I know that they like the warm climate, the sunny territory and above all the sea of Termoli.
A legendary story that my father told me, closely linked to Termoli and its marine territory has particularly struck me and, therefore, I like to tell it to my seagull brothers who come to visit the town or the territory where I now live or simply fly over the area.
This is the legend of Diomedes, companion of Ulysses, who, returning to Ithaca, like the King, after the victorious end of the Trojan war, died with all his crew for losing the route and for getting too close to the islets sighted and shipwrecked with his fragile ship, destroyed and swallowed up in the treacherous sea by the barely submerged rocks of those small picturesque islands, with crystal clear sea, very close to the coast, visited by many tourists because they are easily accessible today from the port of Termoli and that humans since then called Diomedee, in memory of the Greek hero.
It is said that, even today, on full moon nights, my seagull brothers of these islands, also from the islanders called Diomedee, sing the lamentations and melancholic nostalgia of those dead sailors, dispersed in the sea, in vain attempt to return to their homes.
Other humans even say that those sailors, who died in the shipwreck, were transformed, by a spell, into those seagulls. Who knows if it is true and if among them there are some of my ancestor gulls who may have witnessed the shipwreck! Of course I know that in the seabed of the Tremiti islands (I like to call them Diomedee), wrecks of Roman, if not Greek, ships with many terracotta amphorae have been found, very attractive to some tourists.
And now I continue my flight, promising myself to tell you another story in the coming days.
Gabbiano Joe (alias Giuseppe Ramunno for Laura Selection)
