Mrs Darwin’s Egg
I break the egg over the kitchen table. The yolk spills out
on the china plate like gorse in snow.
Outside the snow still falls, blindfolding the brambles.
I put myself in the space between one snowflake and the next.
Soon I will explode the way the gorse pods do,
dried out in the late summer sun.
In he comes. He brings me ideas
as the tern on the shingle spit
brings fish to his mate; the gift of a slip
shining silver in a golden sun.
We dissect a dogfish together on the kitchen table,
taking the parasites from the stomach
while the apples stare from their earthenware bowl.
We count one hundred before the vicar comes.
I place my hand in his, and think myself an explorer too,
‘til I rise, and the weight of his child pulls me down.
Fiona Cartwright lives in Surrey and is a poet, post-doctoral ecologist, and mother of two. Her work has been published in various places, including Mslexia and Butcher’s Dog, and shortlisted for the 2014 Poetry School/Pighog Press pamphlet competition.