Marie Higgins

Three jays in the lower sash,
One in ten, two in nine,
Cry like hawks, readily push fear,
But not through the glass;

Tail of squirrel in eight, torso in four,
Missing its head as squirrels go,
Until the head comes around
When the oak permits two-way traffic –

Downward four-to-eight-to-twelve-to-sixteen,
Like a losing team, before its teammates release
The tree blossoms for stealing, seconds splitting
Into minutes, until the Mourning Dove rests on seven,

At Dogwood Square, where a house finch slides
From second to third and beak-first brothers
Parachute down, below grilles thirteen through sixteen,
Sparrow in five, four, three, two, one, gone.

Prayerful fence-post meetings
Of the little sinless trespassers

Strawberries spied and thieved
Whilst the Waiters wait

Perfect pepper plants
Slip-tied like martyrs to poles

While celestial vines
Explode inside cages

Tiny bright beloved yellow
Blooms becoming

Untainted green orbs
Filling to glow red-like until

Tomato trios cling aerially
Like mobiles over babies

Nearby butternut blooms burst
Before

The surprise takes
When the gardener arrives

Dappled yellow and green
Novitiates will begin

A pious pose
In veneration of the sun

Until beveled pinstripes hug
Hippy buttery frames

On the gardener also
Bending to collect earth’s offertory

The beans make the preordained
Climb righteously up the metal trellis

Where catbirds rest and revere
The sacred sequence

She swam across my window
Against the cloud current of
fast-moving, wispy white dolphins.

The full brightness awakened me,
I couldn’t fall back to sleep.

It’s as if she treaded there with purpose.

A climb to the highest diving board
To be seen before sinking below earth,
A cavernous snorkel unknown to me.

A friend is obsessed with her.

Even when she dips skinny in the sky,
Her various shapes hold meaning.

My eyelids flutter kicked eventually
Until I plunged into deep sleep,
A drowning soak away from her.

I’m barely younger,
Just as blemished,
Little more to prove.
I could be taken,
As just as you,
So won’t you dream of me?
In the wicker chair,
On a parking lot,
Inside a mountain top –
Find yourself,
In the dream of me.
Yell at me,
Unleash our dog,
Caress my hair,
In the dream of me.
Be scared,
Laugh out loud,
Talk nonsense back,
In the dream of me.
Whatever happens
In these dreams,
Matters not to me.
What matters true
To this old gal,
Is that when I’m
Next to you,
Before early light,
That you say, You
Had a dream of me.