1. Egg Anatomy / Astronomy
plotted:
ironically orbits a perfect egg

a dual ellipse inclined to the ecliptic
a full year takes precisely that
self-contained, self-sufficient
it contains all cups
(else

it’s us, the whole world and God’s good sky
who are contained — the shell opens to
the endless white universe
and one glorious unblinking eye.)

no atmosphere, my probe descends
through clean air before landing with a jolt
on an undifferentiated plain.

geographers call us continents:
shady or bright, bumpy or grainy
but really all points decline
from the observer’s eye.

one side is lit and locked
and, but for the diffusion of
moisture and molecules,
each day is largely alike

yet
here embodies audacious hope
and yes, loquacious death —

2. the linguistic egg
in which words jostle
the verbs, the verbs refuse.
adjectives for any fool while
the nouns are exactly as I intend (and not before)
but the verbs are a different course entire. 

3. the straightened egg
falls
the air
squeezed as the great albumenical mass
sloshes forward; opaque ropes that moor
the core mid-channel slacken / tighten /
then snap whipping back thru
structure as layers collapse;
now free the centre rises
its dumb radiance searing some while
unseasonal winter falls on far fields
and imaginary gardens.

a beat
then catastrophe
a plain ridiculous
if egg equals ambiguity
this certitude is fatal:
in one bounce ruined structures
cascade – albumen air torn membranes
spilt gel and fibre tangle frogspit
shellcracks race the horizon
whole sheafs bust loose
spin away allowing dust and air and sunlight
onto a world now ending – this is Krypton’s fail,
the final Atlantean moment
where the doomed hide their faces
but peep thru fingers at
the terrible awesome how
the great eye now blind
stares.

Image: Nils Dardel (1888-1943) [Public domain] c/- Wikimedia Commons. You can read more about the Egg of Columbus, and if you’re interested in the math of the curve of an egg, you can’t go past this comprehensive site (it’s truly fascinating). Written for Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads where Bjorn asks us to consider the unreliable narrator.

And here’s Audrey and Henry Mancini – with Moon River…for your breakfast meditations…