Long Playing Egg Poem

Eggs: Over easy.

Song: “Street People” by Bobby Charles
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Poems: “Archaic Torso of Apollo” by Rainer Maria Rilke
“Lying in a Hammock on William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota:

Archaic Torso of Apollo

We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast’s fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.

translated by Stephen Mitchell, Ahead of All Parting:
Selected Poetry and Prose of Rainer Maria Rilke

Lying in a Hammock on William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,   
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.   
Down the ravine behind the empty house,   
The cowbells follow one another   
Into the distances of the afternoon.   
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,   
The droppings of last year’s horses   
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.   
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.

from Above the River: The Complete Poems of James Wright

Notes:
Like Apollo’s torso, a egg over easy is suffused with brilliance from inside.

Like the persona in Bobby Charles’ “Street People,” this is an egg that you want to hang out with, a egg with whom to share a few High Lifes at the neighborhood dive. They’ve got stories for days. They’ve got some thoughts. They’re in no hurry. Are you?

Like lying in a hammock on a farm in Minnesota, enjoying some excellent over-easies can distill the present with such clarity that you might reconsider whether you’re living your life the way you ought. One thing’s pretty clear: you should eat more eggs.