The old blown egg idea came to me this week, probably in anticipation and hope for spring here in the Northeast. Also because we’ve been enjoying eggs from our daughter’s chickens, and somehow I look at each egg less casually since I know the effort that produced it – both the hen’s and our daughter’s!
So I googled blown eggs and set to work with a turkey lacing pin and a lot of hot air! These are the egg poems I wrote.
solitude
embryo sheltering
in place
enlightenment
first sunlight streaming
through pecked hole
One of my favorite of Saint Hildegard’s visions is “The Cosmic Egg.” Hildegard saw elements of the universe known during the 12th century – fire, earth, water and air, along with the sun, moon, planets and stars. Later in her life, she revised her understanding and saw the universe as a sphere. But the egg image is distinctly feminine, I think. It implies that we are involved in the creation of our natural world. It operates as a cosmic partnership with everything interrelated, which environmentalists have been trying to tell us for a long time.
The blowing wind,
the mild, moist air,
the exquisite greening
of trees and grasses –
In their beginning,
in their ending,
they give God their praise.
~ Saint Hildegard
from Meditations With Hildegard of Bingen by Gabrielle Uhlein, OSF