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