Anne Higgins has been writing poetry for about 45 years. She has had about seventy poems published, in YANKEE, COMMONWEAL,SPIRITUALITY AND HEALTH, The Melic Review, The Drexel Online Journal, and a variety of small magazines.

Some of her poetry is inspired by paintings; she is also inspired through her passion for birdwatching.

To order a copy of AT THE YEAR'S ELBOW (Mellen Poetry Press, 2000. $15.00 postage included), one of Anne's books of poetry, please contact ahiggins@msmary.edu

Poetry from AT THE YEAR's ELBOW...

Georgia O'Keeffe Looks Over Her Shoulder

Just when she thinks she's painted all her fear,
When bleached skulls turn to poppies red as lust,
The sound of something wild attracts her ear.
Black jacket, white soft collar curving near
the place where desert sunset turns to rust
awakens in that neck a prickling fear.

The haunches of dead lovers gleam as clear
in skulls as in the orchid's velvet crust.
Dry rattling of bone curls back her ear.

Her upswept silken hair declares the year
in shades of gray and tortoise brown as dust
just when she thought she'd painted all her fear.

Her thin pink pearl of seashell curves to hear
the desert's voice, more fierce, more dry than just
as three fine wrinkles flow down from her ear.

Such gaunt grace turns her, luscious and severe,
containing bones and orchids, fruit and crust!
Just when she thinks she's painted all her fear
, the sound of something wild attracts her ear.

***

In the Hirschhorn Museum: Jeff Wall

"Untangling"

Greasy yellow hose, thick as a child's arm,
blue rope thick as a dogwood trunk,
white rope grey with dirt, thick as a child's arm.

The hopeless tangle on the workroom floor,
the writhing tangle on the workroom floor,
the writhing serpents on the workroom floor,
distinguished by the colors of the rope.

The writhing serpents on the workroom floor,
the blue intestines on the workroom floor,
the old sea sailings on the workroom floor,
the yellow hose thick as a child's arm,
the frayed and broken ends of chestnut mane
together tangled into argument
of complex sentences ,equivocations
and qualifications all in a mess
on the workroom floor.

The strippers and the sanders on the shelf,
the unplugged witnesses of the argument,
say; how will it be undone?
The man attentive to untangling
stares without strategy.

In the Hirschhorn Museum: Jeff Wall:

"A Sudden Gust of Wind"

The brown earth recovers slowly,
sacred ,scared and scarred.
Only the wind still wilds the air,
kites the sheet music to drums and gusts,
grabs the hat from the man in the suit,
puts the paper back on the trees,
so lonely for birds and color.
On the edge of the world,
the winds still wilds,
wolfish for the dead wolves,
rapturous for routed hawks,
arbitrary for evicted owls.

***

In the Walters Art Gallery:
The Temptation in Eden

It meets you on the central stairs-
Della Robbia's
life sized wreath
in glazed white porcelain.
Olive green leaves
decked with yellow pears,
frame Adam and Eve
deciding.
The serpent,
large as a python,
capable of swallowing them both,
winds herself round
the Tree
of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
The serpent's porcelain arms
twist invitingly,
hands offering
the shining fruit.
From one angle,
Eve looks interested;
Adam, somnolent,
the serpent, earnest.
Eve and the serpent
share twin blonde faces.

( published in her book AT THE YEAR'S ELBOW)