Nest

   Heather June Gibbons

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Taking out the trash, I hear

the nauseating scuttle and coo

of a pigeon nesting

 

on the fire escape in snipped

credit cards and tangled

cassette tape. I didn’t mean

 

to step on its egg.

Now the light on the landing

never gets switched off.

​

 

We disable the smoke alarm

and close thermal-insulated shades.  

I dream of a field, empty of corn

 

and blue in moonlight. I stumble

through redwoods to a rushing river.  

White froth glows in the dark.

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Heather June Gibbons is the author of the chapbook Flyover, and recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Eleven Eleven, Jet Fuel Review, New American Writing, and Sixth Finch. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she teaches creative writing at San Francisco State University. http://www.heatherjunegibbons.com/