A Winter Gift 

If the eggs didn’t nudge each other

in the blood-warm bucket of water and they floated

to the top, we took them out.  I watched twelve

out of fourteen fidget then sink like mint-white pebbles.

That first January

our present of two geese and a gander

from a farm on the coast,  panicked over hedges –

flapped their new wings into Peter’s field

as if migrating until we caught them

and they softened like air in our hands.

Amber beaks clattered, sapphire eyes pinned

the beginning of a story we hugged into a shed

of fresh straw. Henry, Gertie and Lucy discovered the river,

bagged the best lawns and on Valentine’s day,

slipped moonshine eggs like secrets into caskets of down. 

Henry became a queens’ guard outside the sanctuary –

dressed in hissing armour,  neck to the ground

patrolling inside to tuck in loose straw and roll back runaways

before they cooled.  For twenty eight days they processed

to the river to drink, dampen breast feathers, 

tend their caches while we prayed for no thunder to addle,

no drought and no hungry foxes.  Come early May

our garden rolled in yellow like curls of butter over green plates.

Our years of scattering grain, opening and closing

their warm mornings and frosty nights slowed

until all they could do was trust and warn us of strangers.

Now in silence, grass grows undisturbed – even the river

seems less useful and my cakes are pale. On winter nights

I reach into the cupboard inside a dark box tissue-soft

and unwrap blown undecorated Fabergé.