The Messenger

Candling Eggs

51 Candling Eggs At one end of the egg an owl— her head, her wing stumps clear as fingers, the black pulse of her heart beating. In the dark with only the eggglow , its tracery of veins, its membrane, I am trying to let go of you. There is no ritual for raising the dead. I see how it is— the sky between us, threads of sky, soft, paleblue flickering in silver glints off the white branches that spread, my hand held up as if I could stop your fall. It comes to this—warm egg, my palm made momentary cradle. Then the wobbly rise of her head, her fight for breath, for flesh. For now, only my eye enters the thin scrim of her shell. My eye that carries you with it, like a flaw in my iris the shape of a wing. ...