The Mound of Eggs
From a great distance
your voice tells me over a pale white phone
how much you miss me, how you can't wait
for me to come home.
I can see you in the kitchen
clasping the fragile shell of the receiver
as if it were holding us, as if
what held us for years
suddenly could break. And if it did,
wouldn't we find something inside?
Each fall my grandmother and her Russian cook
rubbed two thousand eggs with lard
and stored them in the basement
inside a mound of sawdust.
Two thousand sealed chambers, cells intact---
I used to think they would last
a life. But sent to fill a basket
I had to reach deeper and deeper
into the mound for the furry shells,
hand and arm tunneling
toward the rough slipperiness of grease.
And when an egg broke in my hand,
I would strip it and let the egg white
ooze through my fingers
until I held only the yolk in my palm
like a moist moon.
---Renate Wood
---found in Raised Underground (1991)