Egg Tempera

Egg Tempera

I imagine, him
rowing over, he wont't have
to bring his own.
But pigment
and water and what's not
sold: over or under
weight or candled
to make the shadow
tell it's globe holding sus
-pended story: the yoke,
once free of its own
outer globe, will
submit to his
four fingers
and that little
yellow pouch of sun
he rubs his thumb on
without puncturing.

God is sometimes soft
like this, alchemied in
the hold of an old hen
still worth her weight
still pecking the choicest
crickets corn cake crumbs crop
of rocks down past
and then make
them into a chemistry:
tell me Andy wasn't thinking
somehow what Al fed
his hens mattered
and I'll say
you're full of shit.
That oleo sheen? it
makes a big difference:

factory eggs and their dull
face and thin dregs
and broke legs, the weep
between his stained
fingers and the casual toss.
Loss becomes it
when it's all wound up
on bottom: shell, spitty
bubble rubbed, flung

from his thumb
and rub and struck
the random scatter against some
floorboard doorjamb mopboard
graniteboulder pantsleg
in the blueberry field
and then the speed of
how it all comes to be
brushed: what he saw what he sees
what we see
and he some years now
dead beneath it all.