Quail Egg

While watering I found it under the ponderosa pine,

a stray egg, already cold, dropped by a stray

hen on her way to somewhere else. A thing like that

you have to save, but my pj’s had no pockets,

so I polished it on my sleeve and popped it

into the wet pouch of my mouth for safe keeping.

Its shell tasted like calcium, like sun, which is to say

like nothing at all. I moved that oval prayer

cheek to cheek, and even the names of my hostas—

Stained Glass, Blue Angel, Fire and Ice—

seemed to bear witness to a new magnetic north.

Was the egg fertilized? Should I call it a compass,

cook it in bacon fat? I felt old as an alderman, young

as rain. And for a moment oppositions held:

tame/feral, inside/outside, me/not me, slug/sky.

Then my beloved called from the kitchen for me

to grab a ripe peach or two, and the world wrinkled.

I answered in a nothing voice, like the groggy man

she’d kissed awake at dawn, but already I could taste

funerals on my tongue, wings budding at my back.