Ode to Eggs

Delivered in paper cartons, from trucks or planes and hands.
They come by the dozen, from local farms or distant lands.
In various sizes; pebbles, rocks, stones,
In colours of woody browns and whites like bones.

By a beautiful farm with a hedge, where each breathe in is clear,
I find the chickens lay these eggs that meet the farmer’s guarantee
Just the right size, shape and colour.
They crack like this, have a solid yolk, and are tasty as butter

While in putrid hell of featherless squawking,
The pragmatic eggs spell pain. But also lineage for the awkward
Lonely, crowded larks
Locked in their farms.

These eggs have shells hard to crack, others easily smash and have to rummage
Running to retrieve their runny yolks back, surviving the barrage
Brought with their birth,
Into this unfair earth.

And so whether massmade or organic, forged in hell or in roaming pastures,
Too large, just right, or colours of bare land it
Doesn’t matter.