A Broken Arm

 Wearing your arm encased in a sling

is how you’d carry a fertile egg

that’s precious, fragile and vulnerable:

to hatch, it must lie still and warm

twenty-four hours of every day.

This fact all buxom farm girls knew

in the poet Thomas Hardy’s time                    

when they would rest a motherless egg

within the cleavage between their breasts.

But careless gait, a sudden jolt

or close embrace of the surrogate

could put at risk the adopted chick.

A broken arm is slung up high

to nestle, snug, beside the breast—

if a girl in this predicament

remains sedate and circumspect,

her sheltered arm will mend again

emerging into the light of day

like any naked new-born thing.