The bluebird's cold mistimed egg
fetched up from the one-legged
box after the pair had left for
points south & unknown (never,
as it turned out, to return) I
renested in the half-geode by
the windowsill where it gleamed
&, months becoming years, seemed
about to last forever, grow more
consistent with itself, holding its pure

Eggs come in many sizes
Eggs hold some big surprises
Speckled, brown, white, or blue
Eggs hold babies that are new
Chicks from eggs are fluffy yellow
Chicks from eggs are funny fellows!

Church of broken toasters and singed fuses,
church of the dripping roof and chipped chimney stack,
of the flooded garage and its split door,

gas-hissing pipes and sibilant water heaters,
church of piss-poor light and shaky ladders
where I unchoke windows and dislodge chopsticks

from pipes, smooth curled up wallpaper and key the locks,
fix clocks sticking or ticking with different times,
church where wings of dead flies drift like petals

You haven’t heard
from your father
in six months
and you can’t
bring yourself
to call. In Bengal,
farmers wore
masks on the backs
of their heads
to ward off tigers,
who, one supposes,
wouldn’t attack
a man who was
watching. If I don’t
call, you thought,
nothing is wrong.
Each possibility is
a cavern eaten
out of limestone
by water. Naming
everything is a way
of naming nothing.
His family dropped
away like cicada
husks swept off