Gary Margolis
December 16 at 9:45am ·
How to Lay a Blue Egg
My neighbor keeps a radio on
in his chicken coop.
He wants the maybe-fox gone,
the wandering perhaps-bobcat.
Here, in Vermont, the possible-
fisher cat.
There aren’t any tracks,
wire-snagged fur,
feathers or bones around.
I think he dreamt the birds
are more content listening
to the morning farm report,
the news they can’t understand.
And before noon, Mozart,
I can tell by how they waltz
and twirl in the snow.
In May, the minuet they do.
I could be kidding you
if I didn’t see for myself
the blue eggs they lay
late in the afternoon,
listening to National Public Radio,
the world-expanding interviews.
Before my neighbor returns
to turn it off, to lock the chickens
in their dark house, so he can go back
inside, believing that wasn’t a shadow
of a fox he saw, a bobcat’s broken tail,
the track of twilight’s unannounced
fisher cat.
