An egg: unfertilised, it is one giant cell | Helen Sullivan

Fertilised, it can hold things shaped as differently as: a snake, an auk, a platypus; an emu, a tortoise, a peacockThings I have learned reading about eggs: that chickens have earlobes, and the colour of the earlobes correlates with the colour of the egg: white ear lobe, white egg; red ear lobe, brown egg. What can lay an egg? An orange-peel doris can lay an egg in a tidal pool; a bee hummingbird can lay an egg the size of an aspirin; an auk on a cliff lays a conical egg, which will roll around in a circle instead of forwards and off the edge; a spider wraps her egg in silk, places it on a stalk, then lays another.To Linda Pastan, an egg was "a moon / glowing faintly / in the galaxy of the barn". Approach it, and Louise Glück will tell you: "The thing is hatching. Look." One egg looks - apart from its size, the sharpness of its point, or its colour - much like another: they are all pleasing in the same way, hard-shelled and soft-shaped. "An egg is the most beautiful of all / beautiful forms, a box without corners / in which anything can be contained", wrote Elizabeth Spires. This one structure, variations on round, can hold things shaped as differently as: a snake, an auk, a platypus; an emu, a tortoise, a peacock. Continue reading...