Ed Higgins’s poems and short fiction have appeared in various print and online journals including: Monkeybicycle, Pindeldyboz, Dark Sky Magazine, Tattoo Highway, Word Riot, Foliate Oak, and Blue Print Review, among others. He and his wife live on a small farm in Yamhill, OR, raising a menagerie of animals including two whippets, a manx barn cat (who doesn’t care for the whippets), two Bourbon Red turkeys (King Strut and Nefer-Turkey), and a pair of alpacas named Machu & Picchu. He teaches creative writing and literature at George Fox University, south of Portland, OR, where he is also Writer-in-Residence.---------
Take, for instance, the surprise
of a great blue heron walking
my marshy back field this morning
while I sit here lingering too long
over my coffee and toast.
Its pace cautious and solemn
as the late March air.
In profile, tall, awkward, lean,
gigantic even at this distance,
feathers languid and smooth.
At night this time of year
I can step from the wood-heated
kitchen to listen to chorus frogs
calling to the moon and stars
announcing their need from vernal pools,
in fields by May dry and with grazing cows.
But for now the heron’s truth
is the sharp pointed entrance
of approaching spring. Stalking gray-green
waters, swirling fear that must be
below the opaque surface there.
Reaching carefully to grasp a frog
so small half a dozen could sit on
your open palm. Princes all, awaiting
the kiss of spring on their thin lips
coming like the numbness before birth
or the impaling stillness of death.
I watch the wading bird, letting the coffee
and toast grow cold, unfamiliar before me.
love’s burden
It’s true, many nights I am the sky,
and my eyes, the stars, silver your dreams.
The flight of owls is another thing:
swift clarity and outline, it strains
at nothing. Only lovers and the moon
expect something more to be said,
and neither eyesight nor the chill
of autumn will hold back their desire.
of a great blue heron walking
my marshy back field this morning
while I sit here lingering too long
over my coffee and toast.
Its pace cautious and solemn
as the late March air.
In profile, tall, awkward, lean,
gigantic even at this distance,
feathers languid and smooth.
At night this time of year
I can step from the wood-heated
kitchen to listen to chorus frogs
calling to the moon and stars
announcing their need from vernal pools,
in fields by May dry and with grazing cows.
But for now the heron’s truth
is the sharp pointed entrance
of approaching spring. Stalking gray-green
waters, swirling fear that must be
below the opaque surface there.
Reaching carefully to grasp a frog
so small half a dozen could sit on
your open palm. Princes all, awaiting
the kiss of spring on their thin lips
coming like the numbness before birth
or the impaling stillness of death.
I watch the wading bird, letting the coffee
and toast grow cold, unfamiliar before me.
love’s burden
It’s true, many nights I am the sky,
and my eyes, the stars, silver your dreams.
The flight of owls is another thing:
swift clarity and outline, it strains
at nothing. Only lovers and the moon
expect something more to be said,
and neither eyesight nor the chill
of autumn will hold back their desire.