Wrapped in gold, in the search 
and shouting of Easter Sunday, 
it was the ball of the princess, 
it was pharaoh's body 
sleeping and it's golden case.
At the foot of the picket fence, 
in grass lank with morning rain, 
it was a Sunday school prize, 
silver for second place, gold 
for the triumphant little dome 
of Ararat, and my sister 
took me by the hand and led me 
out onto the wide, wet lawn 
and showed me to bend into the thick nests 
of grass, into the darkest green.
Later I had to give it back, 
in exchange for a prize, 
though I would rather have kept the egg.
What might have coiled inside it—
crocuses tight on their clocksprings?
A bird who’d sing himself into an angel 
in the highest reaches of the garden, 
the morning’s flaming arrow?
Any small thing can save you.
Because the golden egg gleamed 
in my basket once, though my childhood 
became an immense sheet of darkening water, 
I was Noah, and I was his ark,
and there were two of every animal inside me.