Wearing your arm encased in a sling
is how you’d carry a fertile egg
that’s precious, fragile and vulnerable:
to hatch, it must lie still and warm
twenty-four hours of every day.
This fact all buxom farm girls knew
in the poet Thomas Hardy’s time
when they would rest a motherless egg
within the cleavage between their breasts.
But careless gait, a sudden jolt
or close embrace of the surrogate
could put at risk the adopted chick.
A broken arm is slung up high
to nestle, snug, beside the breast—
if a girl in this predicament
remains sedate and circumspect,
her sheltered arm will mend again
emerging into the light of day
like any naked new-born thing.