Easter Eggs

As I hold one steady for my three-year-old while he

slaps it

with garish red, yellow, black, changing my hand

and his to bright apparitions around that perfectly

ordinary whiteness, I wonder what strange need

began this, drove us to add these brittle

ornaments to spring's own: the pastel flowers

of bulbs already open, the sky's deepening blue,

the enfolding green incipient everywhere. But he

sees differently, chooses these fall colors

to wonder at-then, suddenly, wonders most of all

at my hand and how he's transformed it, laughing

as he paints it again and again, until the egg

takes color from my mere touch, and I understand

these eggs are not for spring, not newness: they belong

to that oldest world we've carried always within us,

ablaze

with magnificent birds that could only hatch from such

brilliance,

ourselves savagely radiant in our own colors.