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Laying an Egg (It Takes More Than You Think)

September 8, 2010
By Neda Othman BRONZE, Benicia, California
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Neda Othman BRONZE, Benicia, California
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It’s not a burden, it is a duty
That strikes her intensely with a yearning—
Interrupts her breakfast every morning!
Though seems a chore, ‘tis a thing of beauty.

Her period arrives ‘round eleven
She anxiously paces around the coop
To find some place away from curious troupe.
(In a week, she’d’ve done this times seven.)

Rapidly her eyes blink; her open beak
Is panting. Nature claims her to the nest.
Lo, here it comes—by a heave of her breast,
And finally out it drops, warm and sleek.

Relieved, she gets up like ‘twas no big deal,
Happily cackling, returns to her meal.

The author's comments:
I got my chickens as baby chicks in March of 2009, they matured and began laying eggs in August 2009. It was truly awesome, the day we found the first egg. Soon eggs were coming in on the daily. It was a summer weekend that I had leisure scheduled for the morning and set up a chair and a cup of tea and waited/spied on one of the girls. This sonnet describes the entire experience! If eating real, homegrown eggs in many shades of brown, of many sizes, which are sometimes oblong and sometimes speckled (each hen has her own signature egg) is a wonderful thing, it is an even more wondrous to watch one be made: I even felt like I was intruding on something beautiful, private and sacred.
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