Five Clear Eggs

Found: five clear eggs in a flycatcher's nest On the half-screened porch. I didn't know As I finished the job on my day of rest Where the flycatcher was as I uttered, Oh!

And what to do with the work complete, And a nest sheared off the high eave's edge? (Alerted in her obscure retreat, No bird dared approach the reachable ledge.)

So I left the door of the porch wide open, Left the nest and the threatened eggs alone, Left in pursuit of my perturbed hope in The flycatcher's instinct to claim her own.

Unassured, I returned soon after the current Crisis forewarned me all wasn't well; The eggs, white moon to their five ends, weren't Starred in a brooch of nest hair and shell;

But a ragged tooth's fragment, rough-broken in two, By the chipmunk's hole at the side of the house Affirmed why the thrush-like flycatcher flew Around and around the apple boughs.