The Pigeon’s Egg
I walked into town asking for a sign,
not, you understand, the way to the post office,
but a portent so obvious, like the big word on the hillside: HOLLYWOOD.
Well. As I crossed the closed-to-traffic strip, a parcel cradled in my arms,
I caught a flash of movement in the sky overhead, travelling from right to left, with speed,
and the next half-second, something fell to land three steps in front of me,
on the pavement, perfectly and lightly.
.
Time stopped for the no-time that I closed the gap,
bent my knees, adjusted the package, reached out my right hand,
expecting someone to fight me for it.
One man witnessed my scoop.
I held it up for him and he broke his stride
to appraise an opened white pigeon’s egg three-quarters intact.
A bird thief, we both said, and he walked on, leaving me to examine it.
Survivor of a Biblical rain from the sky,
a pigeon’s nest tidying or a thieving magpie’s meal, the latter, I feel,
because hidden up at one end, stuck on the inside of the empty shell
was a minute very early embryo
tiny as an engagement ruby and just as red
as the thinnest lines of blood dried wire-like in the interior curve.
I wondered what my sign meant,
thinking how well timed it was – to the second –
in the doorway of The Royal Bank of Scotland, Chestergate.
But how if it foretold returning love, it was two years late.
Sarah Taylor-Fergusson writes about the personal, set against the landscapes of the North West of England. She read Fine Art at Oxford. She works as an editor for various publishing houses, and as a literary consultant. Her poems have been published in Puffin Review, and Tincture Journal.