Magic Eggs

I was a child – 9 or so
when we rented
the ground floor of his
dying house.

He was 70 something
but was up early
in the garden where I
looked for magic eggs.

He picked lilies in a basket,
I dug with my toes.
He picked, I looked.
Then with pencils, scalpels
near roots that didn’t go in.

Sure enough after a few days
there were dusty dark
red eggs I carried everywhere.
The kind that fit between
my fingers, never fell.

One morning when he didn’t
make it to the garden, my
father pronounced him dead,
washed his body clean, put
him in an ice box
where I left his eggs.

Magic Eggs

It was a rain-smacked,
skin-flayed house
that didn’t know why it still lived.
Plasters pucker
as windows hit each other.

Why through its giant windows
every morning, I saw
his crumpled silhouette
a bough of lilies in hand
dropping magic eggs and
walking from the garden
so still.