Ed Higgins

I cannot, of course. I bring you back at the oddest times
like during a hail storm in southern California,
of all places. Remembering how we tried once
to catch those tiny white pellets
bouncing off our open palms.

Before they could melt count them you said,
each round wet pearl meant good luck
and many years of happiness together,
in some ancient Chinese saying
you had just made up.

And then laughing in all this strange downpour
and swirling youth and fanciful wisdom
you said we had to feed them to each other too
before they melted entirely from the heat of our hands,
to ensure their good luck on our tongues.

Which must have tasted like forever, only wasn’t.

Bio:

My poems and short fiction have appeared in Duck & Herring Co.'s Pocket Field Guide, Monkeybicycle, Pindeldyboz, and Bellowing Ark, as well as the online journals Lily, Cross Connect, Word Riot, The Centrifugal Eye, and Red River Review, among others. I live on a small farm in Yamhill, OR with a menagerie of animals including a rescued potbelly pig named Odious, and I teach writing and literature at George Fox University, south of Portland, OR.

ed higgins

You can read more poetry from Ed Higgins here.

"Marker," 2006, oil on canvas

by Theresa Pfarr

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