Painted Eggs

Once, when my mother traveled far,

down streets,

past fertile Russian cottage gardens

to a tiny shop in Moscow,

she traced her finger along the painted shell

of many wooden eggs, until she sensed

which ones were to be gathered.

She shelled out several rubles to the shopkeep.

My mother nested these painted beauties for years,

cushioned in newsprint each winter,

unwrapped in spring when her brood of chicks

would come home for Easter feast

with chicks of their own.

I would pay millions of rubles to trace

the outline of my mother’s face, long buried

under heavy sod.

No empty tomb has cracked open.

But after fifteen years, my grief has softened

like shells in the compost to feed the garden.