Too often, I come across
someone’s ill gotten advice:
it isn’t much of a thing,
to take an awl or sharp needle
into the nest, to pull out
the one or two noticeably larger eggs,
to pierce the shell so small it won’t leak,
or, you could commit a different sort of butchering:
simply shake the egg vigorously. As long
as you return it before the parent sees.
We know: brood
think: offspring
think: family
We build our lives on the cruelties we’ll allow,
these are the lines in the sand that we draw.
We know: parasite
think: pariah
think: undesirable
Forced to follow the herd to feed,
forced to leave, they may have tried to nest —
the broken grass, the rasp of rising insects,
the tremble and quake of the earth,
what it must have been like,
who would quiet the hungry caw
once they were gone?
What life would you choose?
A cardinal will not question the difference,
will raise whichever eggs survive. It’s never been
for us to decide.
—
Elizabeth Joy Levinson is a biology teacher in Chicago. Her work has been published in Whale Road Review, SWWIM, Cobra Milk, Anti-Heroin Chic, and others. She is the author of a full-length collection, Uncomfortable Ecologies, available from Unsolicited Press, as well as two chapbooks, As Wild Animals (Dancing Girl Press) and Running Aground (Finishing Line Press).
