He told me how, after soft afternoons
teaching logarithms and waving away
the blackboard's hieroglyphics with a damp cloth
he'd return home to the sweet methane of the chicken sheds.

How he'd change from his suit into overalls
and how he dug his hand deep into the bucket
to draw out a leaking fist, which he opened,
a sail of grain unfurling to the birds beneath.

And how later that same hand would flatten
to find a way through the dark
under the sleeping weight of a hen, to bring out,
like a magician whose tricks are just the way of things,

one egg, warm and bald in his brown palm