Egg Math

on waiting (and so much more)

Another fun collaboration with Fig S.
I wrote the poem, she drew the chickens.
Neither of us counted them.

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Egg Math

Don’t count your chickens.
Count the eggs.

Count the minutes
warmth holds steady—
the patience of it.

Count the hairline cracks
that spider ’cross the calcium
before you can prove
a beak did it.

Count the first break of light—
pointy, orange, hungry.

But still—
don’t count your chickens.

Count their sound—
chirps like a rumor of arrival.

Count the eyes appearing
one by one,
the eggs still silent.

Wing. Two wings.
A leg. Another.

And when the time comes
to count the chickens,
you won’t.

Already bent
over the next round.

Tending,
counting,
beginning again
at the laying.

Looking for a prompt?
Here’s two—but who’s counting?

𖦹 Name the stage just before the thing you’re waiting for. Describe only that.
𖦹 Write a poem that starts with an idiom and then refuses to follow its own advice.

Thanks for being here.

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