Feeding Hour

Jessica Gigot has chosen Feeding Hour as the title of her new collection. A thread runs through the poems as sheep and lambs and her own newborn find comfort in their nourishment, contentment in their surroundings. As a farmer, teacher, and musician, Gigot weaves all three into a fine thread, poems focus on her flock, the birth of lambs, the death of the first one she raised. With a keen eye, she considers the sacred transformation as ….

Billions of bacteria and protozoa and fungi

Lie and die are reborn as mother’s milk.’

Her seven-poem series on swans is the most endearing segment of the collection, best read accompanied by Saint-Saens’ melody of the swan in his Carnival of the Animals (readily found on the miracle of YouTube). Here, as elsewhere, the poems offer a visual element – the wedge of trumpeter swans on dormant farmland, the transient flush of waterfowl.

Gigot follows her chosen path when one swan is viewed from a practical standpoint:

‘In Houston, after the floods,

a midwife rides an inflatable swan

to reach a laboring client.

Babies don’t wait for good weather.

Water streamed down her streets, left

Her stranded until a neighbor said,

‘Try this!’

There are poets who create a mystique, challenging the reader. Gigot offers simple words, she prefers to share. Her poems delight.