Felicity Marks

Shelling Blue Eggs

I shelled a blue egg
in the woods,
peeled back its cracked
cage of a home –
letting life escape
as water to the moist earth,
dark and cold as marriage.
Then, by morning,
Crumbled and dry as the
wedding cake we had.

I wondered that I might act
as your child,
curious as a dead cat
and expecting life from
an empty carcass of Spring.

Eggs are the beginning of life,
but I cut them short that day –
to a trail of dust and ash
in our attic, where I kept
their shells in a shoebox.
The song thrush set by
the puffin, like trophies –
but above all, mounted fragility,
was the carrion crow. Rarity
buried deep as murder.

Black as a funeral, I would
watch her wings soar
like a neglected kite, then
fall as the wind faded
like an afternoon frost.