Outside my window the gulls
white and grey as the morning
fog circle above the estuary,
worried to flight by a pair of
joggers just released from the mist
along the wet sand’s edge.
White waves ease under the fog
with a morning laziness I share,
clearing the runner’s tracks behind.
Soon I will go down to breakfast
but for now I stand and watch them:
watching the pulling waves and
the veering gulls, and the early
runners who ghost back into the silent
fog escaping the gulls’ harried cries.
Ed Higgins’ poems and short fiction have appeared in various print and online journals. He and his wife live on a small farm in Yamhill, OR, where they raise a menagerie of animals including two whippets, two manx barn cats (who don’t care for the whippets), an emu named To & Fro, and a pair of alpacas named Machu & Picchu. Ed teaches writing and literature at George Fox University, south of Portland, OR.
© 2010, Ed Higgins
Halfway Down the Stairs 