an Egg a Day Five

Northern Harrier, 2001, colour print, 24 x 20 in

White, nearly round as a cue ball, your egg might

roll true on that green tableland banked behind dykes –

Tantramar, maritime prairie the sea laid down,

grain by grain, when the tide was ‘asking high.’

You tilt above this reclaimed place

like a bubble in a spirit level,

tipping by degrees, as if pondering

a question of loyalty, reparation for past injustice.

You yourself suspend the laws of nature,

hanging in the sky, stalled

on upswept wings,

calling all the shots.

Photograph by Thaddeus Holownia. Poem by Harry Thurston. 

From the catalogue Ova Aves published by Anchorage Press, 2011