poemimage

One very sunny day an egg shall envelop my shadow. An eagle shall be overhead, perhaps a bit to the east or west, lowering into the updraft, on the hunt & returning to the nest satisfied.

A robin swooping into shade swallows a delicately tangled necklace of humming insects. A heron drapes her wing upon a sloping stone & swallows magnetic frogs who prophesize.

A hen clucking like a sticky typewriter key repeats the sound of curvilinear incantations, unceasing, between echoes of breath, sleep & a sudden kerfuffle.

Egg, tell me how we shall begin.

Egg, tell me how we shall accomplish our mission.

One very sunny day an egg enveloped my shadow. I was minding my own business. I felt my blood in the sun-blood of my ancestors.

I felt them go ashore. I felt them carve and chisel enveloped by shadows. I felt them carry fire. I felt them carry a weighted promise.

Egg, tell me who & what, alchemically one very sunny day, you shall become in traveling a distant path to yourself: An eagle, a fluent ballerina, or a sun-flecked tidal wave. An astronaut, cosmonaut or vimani pilot. A Spanish painter rising like cream in early Modernism.

Or the hen caught up in a sudden kerfuffle. Or the heron draping elegant ink-like feathers. Or the barrel-chested north wind whiplashing trees. An opera singer who resounds triumphantly or a trumpeter swan harkening. A blue parakeet, nodding his fuzzy head, asleep & dreaming.

Or a sea turtle diving in the dark. The Ice Age thawing, a solar flare consuming or a fairy-tale princess personifying an archetype. A sphinx-like barn owl in the rafters, a barn swallow exiting a hole, or an amber bale of hay. A cosmic chant vibrating hearts. Fire-flame in a bowl. In a deep cauldron.

The language of trees. Dotted zigzags on grey stone carved with a chisel. A dotted triple spiral carved with a chisel. A feather wafting into a mist. A deer-god in a yoga position. The full moon fully incandescent. An escapee escaping hollow & corrupt civilizational madness. A druid-like hero, positioned in the now, opening portals to before. I promise I will tell nobody.

Egg, tell me where & when we shall meet again.

One very sunny day an egg enveloped my shadow & all shadows.

One very sunny day an egg enveloped salt & the volatile, shadows of the mighty & ancient world, honey & vinegar, shadows of this world in the light of this world, goats hanging in a market & geraniums in shade, clandestine meetings, the animated shadows we imagine spilling forward, the final page of a novel steeped in symbolism, shadows of a future dread we pledge to circumvent, sacrificing & shattering our personal selves to preserve, as guardians, the original innocent nourishment of joy & play, for all children & childhood, unfolding like the age-old unseen.

For the original brilliant sun. For the mechanics and gears of illumination, opposite to opaque – yet weighted with antiquity. Like an ancient accordion book, one very sunny day, unfolding & evolving.

Egg, show me those secret markings you made on the trees.

I don’t know how this egg came to be (unfortunately) on the sidewalk but the encounter stayed with me. This posting developed over a couple of weeks. First I put up ‘scene of the crime’ photographs along with the first draft of a poem. Then I edited the poem, with changes to the text visible in almost ‘real time.’ Then I created digital (Photoshop) manipulations of the photos using colour. Then it dawned on me to check a symbol dictionary for meanings associated with this entity and shape.

In The Book of Symbols: Reflections on Archetypal Images I read: ‘The egg is the mysterious ‘center’ around which unconscious energies move in spiral-like evolutions, gradually bringing the vital substance to light…’ If the egg had not been on the sidewalk (with yolk & egg white spilled out the cracked shell & spread across the concrete) I doubt I would have thought of an egg at that moment. Thus, my imagination turned synchronicity into images & text. One might also say sound. The egg, there and then in loss, became a poetic vessel for hope & empathy.