Feeding Time
in Golden Gate Park
by Ed Higgins

In the park
at noon
fluttering
down
patrolling between
& around
the old one-eyed man’s
feet

pigeons strut
& flutter
darting in comic
cautious feints
as beggar birds do
cooing quietly

all the while
eating his grain
scattered by handfuls
from the closed paper bag
now clutched
to his leg
as he leans down
toward the startled
gray birds
sharing mild
gossip with them.

Ed Higgins’ poems and short fiction have appeared in Pindeldyboz, Mannequin Envy, Word Riot, Otoliths, Tattoo Highway, Foliate Oak and qarrtsiluni, among others. My wife and I live on a small farm in Yamhill, OR, where we raise a menagerie of animals including two whippets, two manx barn cats (who don’t care for whippets), an emu named To & Fro, and a pair of alpacas named Machu & Picchu.