(Poem) The Egg on the Beach by Carolyn Lee Boyd

I promised my Mother, the Great Creatrix of us all, 

That when Her soft, strong voice was only infinite silence in my ears,

I would come to this shore to breathe with the waves.

An odd vow when made on that sunlit, happy, cherished day,

But now that dreaded moment is here and

I lie on my belly and pound the sand

With wounded feet and battered hands scarlet like poppies.

I howl, scratch my face to ribbons, 

Push every breath from my lungs to still the reverberation

Of the barrenness of my sorrowful body.

Finally I lay still and remember my final moments with my mother,
The loss of she who bore me the cause of my desolation.
As she closed her eyes the last time, our two was now only one,
And the wave of breath left her now quiescent body.
Then, I felt the same grief as when I see overabundant algae
Blooming on the warming lakes,
And animals foraging for food
That no longer grows where it has for millennia.
The birch and aspen disappeared,
The bees seek flowers that have long since gone by.

In answer I hear the waves flowing in and out, a relentless, hopeful heartbeat.
I open my eyes and spy an egg on the beach.
Tiny, sandy colored with black splotches, broken, its pieces scattered.
Even in the midst of so much heart-break,
I know that this egg is here because
Humans have come together to protect it,
To cheer each new hatchling as a victory¹.

A chirping warns that a tiny chick,
The inhabitant of the broken shell,
Is taking her first shaky steps on the shore.
I watch in awe and gratitude.
Now I see that when my mother’s breath stopped,
The love that she brought to the world,
Joined with my Mother’s tides and moon pull to
Ensure that the waves continued their breathing.
The tiny bird breathing with them.

Nearby, our Mother is quietly humming
And making more fragile, exquisite birds egg masterpieces.
We meet Her on the beach
As our human mothers told us to do,
And we learn to take our mortal place
As protectors, stewards, healers, maternal thinkers.
What else can we do?

In a few weeks the grown bird will fly away south,
As its kin has done for millennia,
Free for one more year at least.
And the eggshell will decay and nourish new beings born in the sand.
Next year I will come again to breathe with the waves.
I will not pound the sand or howl
But quietly wait and hope that the bird,
Now ready to be a mama, returns with a mate,
That they will make a nest and fill it with brown speckled eggs
And I will sing to them in praise with my breath that, for now,
Flows in and out, trying to make the world anew
With my Mother, my mother, and another baby bird.

1. The egg is that of a piping plover, a small shore bird that was once nearly extinct but is now almost sustainable due to the efforts of scientists and volunteers across states and countries who protect the nests and eggs from predators and beachcombers, watching to see which birds will return each year to hatch new families. ↩︎

(Meet Mago Contributor) Carolyn Lee Boyd