Nest Eggs
by Sean Sexton
Yesterday morning I prepared the roe of the mackerel queen
my son caught on a Saturday morning off-shore excursion.
I exhumed two swollen, pink, vein-bound bags from the silver
damsel, and sliced them into pieces to sauté.
I lament her demise, eggs never laid, fish lives
that never will be--eaten and relished with shame.
And the pea-hen that set five eggs in our dooryard
at the foot of St. Francis beneath the penumbra of a sapling
as we watched in awe of her sorry chosen nest, her
unfaltering devotion to the task. She'd stand
a moment, shift the eggs like a careful cook frying
chicken pieces, managing warmth, and some kind of order.
The curvature and needling devise of her beak revealed
its perfection for such, as did her shape, crouched
like morning fog upon a hollow. Day or night, rain or shine,
she stayed. In a downpour at dusk, we tried to help her,
swiped a shower curtain from the guest bath, to drape
in the branches of the tree, affixed with clothespins
and best of intention. We left a radio blaring through the night,
wakened to the crying, same as last month's hen that hatched
three fuzzy balls with legs she led half a week, feeding,
gathering them in when they strayed, until in a single
obliterating moment they were taken. For days she wandered
yelping, searching aimlessly. Now shells lie asunder
like smashed crockery. She's afoot and again, loose in the air--
the sound the world makes.
Sean Sexton was born in Indian River County and grew up on his family's Treasure Hammock Ranch, eight miles west of Vero Beach, Florida. He divides his time between taking care of a 600 acre cow-calf and seed stock cattle operation, painting, and writing. He is married to artist Sharon Sexton; they have two grown children and live on their ranch in a house they built with their hands. He has kept journal-sketch books drawn from his life since 1973 and was awarded an Individual Artist’s Fellowship from the State of Florida in 2000-2001. He is the author of Waldo’s Mountain: A Brief History of a Small Elevation; (Waterview Press, 2001); Blood Writing, Poems (Anhinga Press, 2009), and The Empty Tomb (University of Alabama's Slash Pine Press, 2013). He was a presenter at the National Grazing Lands Coalition Conference in Orlando on the subject of Art and Agriculture. He has been a panelist at the Florida Literary Arts Coalition Conference in St. Augustine, FL, since 2012, and a regular performer at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada, since 2011. He became inaugural Poet Laureate of Indian River County in 2016. "Nest Eggs" is from his most recent collection of poems, May Darkness Restore (Press 53, 2019).
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