Barn Lit by a Duck Egg
1.
O spheroid O perfect thing
O white (in this case) O brown (in another)
O thin shell transparent prehistoria
transporting splendent from one place to another
from inside to outside where we crouch
on these rotting wet boards in the pig-reeking dark
from nest to table rolling light through veins
through skin thin as paper tissue
you issue morning day fire I’ve named you
Edison little Eddie Egg I don’t know
what’s going on inside there
and I’m not about to crack
the only albuminous source in this lumenless room
smelling of goat and fowl
2.
egg glowing still warm
from the heart-beating body
of your mother heating my palm
while frosting it in duck dung egg
of lopsided midnight bottom first
you present and will balance
if conditions are right O candling egg
if only I could be as perfect as you
one organic smooth-skinned
beauty with no sticking out appendages
no awk-angled fingers and toes no nose
I’ll roll your luminosity in my palms switch
from right to left toss you like a juggler
and catch you in my lamp-lit mouth.
3.
there’s nothing an egg can’t be
it births a thousand mythologies
it pours out the breaking point
smells like the pouring paste
camouflaging the sulfur until
the heat’s on and stays on
little milky knot of attachment
tomorrow I’ll go ahead and eat you
or strain you out
then whisk away the sun and its gilt
dilute it with white reason
gobble you down
4.
a child finds a cracked egg
saves it in a shoe box
and swoons her first real swoon
when she rediscovers it weeks later
at the top of the closet behind
mister potato head medusafied
O egg’s swan song I slip
rock’s auk’s egg between my legs
and guide it in no strings attached
and I’m a lit body a Keith Haring lamp
radiating Burchfield vibrations
in creams and sunflower listen
music of the night from an egg
Messiaen could see it
and we can too if we lean close
rest the egg in the pinna of our ear
it will sing us until we wake up
we’ll dance to it and sway our Daffy Duck tails
among the horsetail and lambs tongue
hold hands with Burchfield’s ears
and Messiaen’s eyes link arms
with all the synergists living in secret places
where nothing brings on everything
and everything happens at once
5.
it’s raining on this duck egg now
but not enough to put out its light
just polish it up slip wheels
under it and roll it down the line
like a new Volkswagen bug still
sticky inside from its not-birth
backlit road map of the pointed world
there you see it the light
tracing the unpredictable line
then bursting through
irradiating the barn